1920 Love / Murray Official Planning Map of Miami, Florida

This is the 1920 second edition of the first official plat map of Miami, published at the height of its development during the Third Florida Land Boom. The map lays out the streets and development of Miami from roughly Northeast 39th Street to Kloeber Bay Fronts and illustrates streets, parks, private property holdings, hotels, utilities and more. It exhibits additional manuscript work dividing the city into 25 zones, as well as identifying Highland Park and the home of someone named 'Mary Louise' on SW Fourth St.

Florida Land Booms

In the second half of the 19th and throughout the early 20th century, Florida experienced a series of land booms and crashes. The first followed the Second Seminole War (1835 - 1842), when the government offered homesteaders who agreed to stay five years 160 acres of free land. The second follows the arrival of the railroads to central Florida, leading to nearly 15 years of prosperity and economic growth - mostly revolving around the booming citrus industry. New settlements sprang up throughout the northern half of the state, many owned by absentee investors who never personally visited Florida. The boom collapsed in 1894-95 when a series of historic freezes wiped out the citrus harvest. Property depreciation following the freezes allowed Henry Flagler (1830 - 1913) to develop the Florida East Coast Railway. This, and the arrival of the highway system in the 1920s, led to the third Florida land boom from 1920 to the stock-market crash of 1929.

Publication History and Census

The map was originally compiled by Charles Warren Murray, city engineer, and published by the city in 1918. The map was subsequently revised by Richeson Love, Warren's successor as City Engineer, in 1920 - as here. Our records suggest this would make it the 2nd or 3rd published map of Miami. We note the unpublished manuscript Knowlton map of 1896 and the 1918 first edition of the present map. (In addition, Sanborn issued three insurance maps.) Scarce.