{"product_id":"puerto-rico-map-1823-regional-print-san-juan-mayaguez-vieques","title":"Puerto Rico Map 1823 Regional Print - San Juan, Mayaguez, Vieques","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis engraved and hand-colored map of Puerto Rico was produced in 1823 by the Baltimore publisher Fielding Lucas Jr., one of the earliest detailed commercial maps of the island published anywhere in the United States. Lucas, who had moved from his native Fredericksburg, Virginia, through Philadelphia before settling in Baltimore, had already beaten his rival Mathew Carey to market with his first American state atlas back in 1812 and 1813, and by 1823 had commissioned an entirely new engraving, cut by B.T. Welch, for his own General Atlas Containing Distinct Maps of All the Known Countries in the World, widely considered the finest general atlas produced in the United States up to that time. The same design was reissued the following year in Lucas's standalone West India Islands atlas, this time without the historical letterpress text border used in a competing Carey \u0026amp; Lea edition, printed instead on quality wove paper alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRoughly forty place names are recorded along Puerto Rico's coastline, capturing the principal ports, rivers and settlements known to navigators of the early 1820s, with the capital labeled San Juan de Porto Rico and its defensive fortifications, Castillo del Morro and El Morro, marked prominently near the harbor entrance. Fine hachuring traces the island's rugged interior mountain ranges from the western coast near Mayaguez across to the eastern capes, giving a genuine sense of Puerto Rico's topography rather than a flat outline alone. The neighboring islands of Vieques, labeled here as Bequa or Crab Island, and Culebra, labeled Serpent's Island, are prominently featured to the east, alongside a channel marked as the Great Passage. A crisp eight-point compass rose and a neat block-letter title cartouche complete the composition, hallmarks of Lucas's careful, uncluttered engraving style.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis early edition is a strong choice for a collector of American commercial cartography or for anyone with Puerto Rican family history reaching back to the island's Spanish colonial period. It is the earliest and most place-name-dense of several Puerto Rico maps in this collection, predating the later Cram editions of 1902 and 1911 by nearly eighty years and distinguished by its rich coastal nomenclature and its historic English-language island names for Vieques and Culebra. It is offered unframed in a full range of sizes to suit any wall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588544860491,"sku":"SKU2170-16x20","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588544893259,"sku":"SKU2170-A2","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588544926027,"sku":"SKU2170-18x24","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588544958795,"sku":"SKU2170-50x70","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588544991563,"sku":"SKU2170-A1","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588545024331,"sku":"SKU2170-24x32","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588545057099,"sku":"SKU2170-70x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588545089867,"sku":"SKU2170-75x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58588545122635,"sku":"SKU2170-A0","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU2170.jpg?v=1790255818","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/products\/puerto-rico-map-1823-regional-print-san-juan-mayaguez-vieques","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}