1676 map of Carolina
About this map
John Speed. A New Description of Carolina. London, 1676.
- Date created
- 1676
- Location
- North Carolina and South Carolina
- License
- Copyright unknown.
- Source
- Original image housed by Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library / University of Georgia Libraries
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for colonial, exploration, maps, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
1676 map of Carolina drawn by British cartographer John Speed. This is one of the earliest published maps of the colony, and it reflects the colonists’ limited understanding of the territory, as well as some amount of wishful thinking. The map appears to be directionally skewed, so the Appalachian mountains are situated northeast of the coast. Speed based this map on reports and a map made years earlier by a German explorer named John Lederer, according to a catalog published by map dealers Richard B. Arkway, Inc. (pdf). Lederer had undertaken an expedition to the western reaches of Carolina, expecting to find the Pacific Ocean just across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Along the way, he reported a number of geographical features that didn’t exist, including a huge lake and the vast Arenosa Desert. These features appear in Speed’s map.
