14 May Malcolm Young Lecture

Rodney Kite Powell will give the 2025

‘Hernán Cortés Map of the Gulf of Mexico’

There are a handful of Florida maps that rise to a level of international importance. One of those is the incredibly rare Hernán Cortés’s map of the Gulf of Mexico/Map of Tenochtitlan. Worldwide, the map’s significance is centered on the view of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan – the first city in the Americas to appear on a printed map. For southeastern US scholars, though, the map of the Gulf of Mexico is far more important as it includes the Florida peninsula and, more importantly, the words ‘La Florida’ – the first time the name appears on a printed map. The lecture will reveal the circumstances surrounding the map’s creation and history.

Rodney Kite-Powell is the Director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center, where he joined the staff in 1995.   Born and raised in Tampa, he has written and lectured extensively on the region and state.

Rodney is an officer with the Philip Lee Phillips Society of the Library of Congress where he serves on the Academic Committee, and in 2019 he was named the official county historian for Hillsborough County by the Board of County Commissioners. He is the author of three books with a fourth and fifth in progress. Rodney currently lives in Tampa with his wife and two children