Vintage Framed Texas Map Reprint, Hoffman and Walker’s Historical Map

NOTE: THIS IS A FRAMED VINTAGE REPRINT
DELIVERY IN Houston, Austin, San Antonio Texas areas only. Email address for delivery quote.
Frame shown will be provided unless material is out of stock. if it is we will provide similar or upgraded material.

Original for sale, see our other listing.

UPDATE: We now have vintage reprints of the Hoffman & Walker Map. These were printed in the 1980's - 1990's and acquired from a collection in 2007. They are printed on a thinner paper stock and have all the detail of the original. We only have limited number of these reprints. This would be great for a conference room, office, home, ranch or just give as a gift to your favorite Texan. Don't miss out, when they are gone, there will be no more.
Map show is the original on heavy paper stock.


Researched, compiled, and drawn by Bill Hoffman and Bill Walker, this impressive map focuses on roads and trails of nineteenth century Texas. The map is augmented by nearly three dozen artistic vignettes accompanied by textual descriptions of historically significant events ranging from early discovery in Texas, to conflicts with American Indians, and other interesting historical stories.

In 1685, in his quest to find the mouth of the Mississippi River, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643–1687) landed in the Gulf of Mexico and established Fort St. Louis. Although the French settlement did not last long, it had far reaching consequences as it focused the attention of the Spanish government in Mexico on east Texas, leading to the establishment of missions and presidios in the area. LaSalle’s landing on the Texas coast is the earliest scene depicted on the map.[1]

Hoffman & Walker’s map contains illustrations and descriptions of various conflicts with indigenous peoples within Texas. Depicted throughout West Texas and the Panhandle are several battles, including the Battle of Blanco Canyon, the Adobe Walls Fight, and the Buffalo Wallow fight. To the west of Washington-on-the-Brazos, the map includes the story of the scalping of Josiah Wilbarger at the hands of a group of Comanche Indians. Wilbarger was a member of a surveying expedition that came under attack, during which he suffered multiple wounds, was left for dead, and was scalped. Incredibly, he survived the ordeal and was returned safely to his family.

Isaac Burton’s “Horse Marines” are featured near Corpus Christi Bay gazing out toward Copano Bay. This was the site of one of the more bizarre tactics ever used to commandeer an enemy ship. In the months following the Battle of San Jacinto, Texan forces were dispatched to secure the coastline against potential Mexican incursions. Upon encountering a Mexican ship in Copano Bay, Burton and his horse-mounted rangers employed cunning and deception to bloodlessly take control of not just that ship, but two additional ships that came later.

The northeastern portion of the map includes a vignette of a man sitting at the edge of a body of water, aiming a rifle out toward the horizon. The text describes this location as Potter’s Point, the homestead of Robert Potter, the former Secretary of the Navy of the Republic of Texas. Potter attempted to escape an armed dispute with a neighbor by diving into a lake, but was shot and killed by a marksman posted on the shore.[2]

Finally, just below the image of Potter’s demise, and relevant to the General Land Office, a block of text is dedicated to describing the particular, somewhat peculiar (by modern convention) process by which land owners were granted possession of their land under Spanish rule. It notes that the new land owner was taken by the hand and “walked about…pulling weeds, made holes in the ground, planted posts, cut down bushes, took up clods of earth and threw them on the ground” as well as engaging in other tokens of possession.

Hoffman and Walker’s Pictorial, Historical Map of Texas contains an enormous amount of information packed into a neatly illustrated map of the state of Texas.