The Washington Times of 100 years ago that I’ve been republishing here recently is not the Washington Times of today. The original Washington Times was founded in 1893 by William Randolph Hearst and eventually merged with the Washington Herald in 1939 to become the Washington Times-Herald. In 1954 the Washington Times-Herald was purchased by the Washington Post and merged into the Washington Post and Times-Herald. The Washington Post eventually dropped the Times-Herald from it’s masthead in 1973. In 1982, less than a year after the the demise of the Washington Post’s rival daily newspaper, The Washington Star, the contemporary version of the Washington Times was created by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon. In the archives on this blog, I have not made any attempt to separate the two Washington Times, nor do I plan to. All one needs to do is see the original date of publication and they should automatically know which Washington Times is being written about.

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As I mentioned previously, this week I’ve been exploring the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers archive. Last night I came up with the idea that I could create an entirely new blog dedicated to showing news from exactly 100 years ago. Dubbed “The Hundred Year Old News Blog,” each entry would be a newspaper article from exactly 100 years ago and to test the theory, I decided to see what today’s blog entry would have been. To my surprise, I found that the now-defunct newspaper called the San Mateo Item used a map of eastern Florida for it’s masthead.

According to the entry in Chronicling America:

The San Mateo Item began publishing in 1891. F.A. Bailey was one of its early editors. The paper periodically appeared under the title of the Item. It is unknown when the San Mateo Item finally ceased publication, but holdings are reported in the Putnam County Archives for 1913.

San Mateo is located in Putnam County in northeastern Florida. The area sustained various agricultural activities about which the San Mateo Item reported. San Mateo was also well known for its recreational opportunities, having more than a thousand ponds and lakes and approximately one hundred miles of access to the St. Johns River, especially attractive to bass fishermen. Sporting activities were of sufficient note to merit coverage by the British press. The Outing, a London sports magazine, complained in its 1891-92 issue that the Item had reprinted one of its articles without credit. The Outing asserted that its enterprise was dedicated in part to distributing “articles likely to attract the sportsman to Florida.” Apparently, San Mateo was worth watching.

Currently there is not a Wikipedia entry for San Mateo Item newspaper

What is interesting about the map is that its presented in a East to West configuration instead of the modern North to South configuration. Starting from the right side of the map going left, you trace Florida’s longest river, St. Johns River, north towards Jacksonville, and near the middle you have the newspaper’s namesake, San Mateo.

The map shows the following towns, lakes, and railroads (roughly South/Right to North/Left):

• Sanford
• Lake Monroe (Shown, but not listed)
• Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (Listed as A. C. L. R. R.)
• Lake George
• Crescent City
• Crescent Lake (Now known as Lake Crescent)
• Daytona (Renamed Daytona Beach in 1926 after the merger of the towns Seabreze and Daytona Beach)
• Ormond (Renamed Ormond Beach in 1949)
• Florida East Coast Railway
• Welaka
• San Mateo
• Palatka
• East Palatka
• Hastings
• Federal Point
• St. Augustine (Founded in 1565, it is the oldest continuously occupied European established city, and the oldest port, in the continental United States)
• Green Cove Springs
• Pablo (Changed to Jacksonville Beach in 1925)
• Atlantic Beach
• Mayport
• Jacksonville

Finding this unique map has given me some extra enthusiasm for finding more maps in old newspapers!

• A T-Rex Google Map On My Neighborhood Via Twitter
• [Found Map] The 3rd District Police Station in Washington, DC
• What the Stars Tell of The Times - The Washington Times, February 9, 1896
• Found Propaganda Map From The Oromo Liberation Front
• A Projected Relief Park Map of the United States - The Washington Times, March 28, 1897
• My Accidental Geography Submission "Gingerbread DC" Was Featured Today on StrangeMaps
• whereyouare / whereiam@ - A Satircal Election Map of Maine's Vote on Same-Sex Marriage
• A Diagrammatic Photograph Showing The American Warship, The Delaware, Blowing Up New York City
• [FOUND MAP] The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, The Younger (1533)
• Randle Highlands VS Fort Dupont [Antique Overlay of an Anacostia Alternative Future]
• [FOUND MAP] The Masthead Map of the San Mateo Item Newspaper
• Map of Teacher Starting Salary vs. Annual Amount Spent on Inmates
• Map Tattoo: The State of Maryland
• "NO" - Found Cartographic Typography
• Map of the Indigenous Languages of North America
• Groupon.com is illegally using my map "DC Stencil" for a Facebook advertisement
• [Found Maps] License Plate Maps of DC & Maryland at Artomatic 2009
• Before & After Aerial Photographs of Ground Zero in Nagasaki, Japan
• [FOUND MAP] Dear WMATA, is it called the Hirshhorn Gallery or Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden?
• Note to the cartographers at the New York Times: the Red Line goes into Maryland
• [FOUND MAP] Isola d'Elba aka the Island of Elba
• [Found Map] Topographic window sign at Current Lounge & Sushi Restaurant
• Unique Maps of Iraq in the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC
• The aerial photography of the area around the Metro crash site contains a Metro train
• The Craig Retroazimuthal Projection aka the Mecca Projection
• World Wildlife Fund's Zoomorphic Fantasy Maps
• Nixon Sends GIs Into Cambodia And An Inverted 1970 Map of Communist Controlled Laos and Cambodia
• Thomas Jefferson's Map of Washington from March 31st, 1791
• The Peters Projection advocated on the West Wing television show
• The 11 Mile Canyon Dam
• [FOUND MAP] New York City: The 51st State
• The American Flag in a 51 Star Configuration with One Star Removed
• Geospatial art created by exploiting search engine aggregation algorithms
• Found in the Grand Juxtaposition: I am not a terrorist in Tucson
• She's got the sole of the city with SWIMS galoshes
• You're A Nation!
• Kiss My Art, Just Kiss It
• The Geography of Personality Interactive Map
• Federico Aubele's Anthropomorphic Map of Panamericana
• The Adidas World Map and the Adidas Map of the Western Hemisphere
• Wasilla, Alaska is literally off the map, the Google Map that is
• A New & Somewhat Accurate Map of the Tropic of Gemini and the Tropic of Sagittarius
• Democratic National Convention 2008 - Photos from Day Two
• My Weekend in Photos [8/22-8/24]
• A World Map Sign @ the A N M Market & Deli in the Atlas District
• Photos from last night's "Quart Bag" exhibition @ the Civilian Art Projects
• Lost in a hairy bush? Use a map! - Or just a razor instead...
• My first jury duty experience; Courthouse needs more art
• The National Gruntledness Index
• Map of the Languages of Europe
• A new change in Washington, DC's imagery on Google's servers
• Map of American Casualties
• geographic dimensions of spam