AUSTIN, Texas— Today, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to announce that the Texas General Land Office (GLO) book, Texas Takes Shape: A History of Maps from the General Land Office (University of Texas Press, 2025), was awarded the Ron Tyler Award for Best Illustrated Book on Texas History and Culture. Each year, the Tyler Book Award Committee of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) awards this prize for a book on Texas history that uses special visual applications and makes a significant contribution to Texas history and culture, with a strong emphasis on illustrations.
“It is truly an honor for the GLO to accept the prestigious Ron Tyler Award from the Texas State Historical Association’s Tyler Book Award Committee for Texas Takes Shape: A History in Maps from the General Land Office,” said Commissioner Buckingham. “This crucial piece of literature tells the story of Texas by immersing readers in GLO’s beautifully preserved and restored maps and helps keep the Lone Star State’s rich history alive for future generations. As a ninth-generation Texan, I am proud to share this unique record of how our state took shape, created by GLO staff who have dedicated their careers to safeguarding Texas history.”
James Harkins, Deputy Director of Archives and Records at the GLO, accepts the Ron Tyler Award for ‘Texas Takes Shape’ on March 6, 2026
This prestigious award is in tribute to Ron Tyler, the director of TSHA from 1986 to 2004, who enjoyed a career as a scholar, publisher, and teacher, and studied the connections between art and history. Under his leadership, TSHA published many enduring illustrated books that tell the story of Texas.
“Mark Lambert, James Harkins, Brian A. Stauffer and Patrick Walsh, Texas Takes Shape: A History in Maps from the General Land Office (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2025) makes a significant contribution to Texas history and culture, effectively combining its text with the lavish use of illustrations. It comprises a general historical narrative of Texas’ origins and growth, illustrated with maps from the collection of the General Land Office,” said Vicki Cummins, Ron Tyler Award Committee member and author of Making the Unkown Known: Women in Early Texas Art, 1860s-1960s, and Professor of History Emeritus at Austin College.
As the steward of over 45,000 historic maps, the GLO has long been home to some of the most important cartographic treasures in Texas history. The product of years of collaborative research from GLO staff, Texas Takes Shape is the first book to bring these manuscripts and printed maps together in a way that visually narrates the evolution of Texas — from colonial frontiers to the Republic to statehood.
Cummins went on to say, “The maps are explained in both their historical and cartographical context. In addition, the nine “Beyond the Neatline” entries are analytical essays that focus on thematic and technical topics like Indigenous Cartography, Mapping the Nueces Strip, and Frontier Surveying in Texas. This work will be informative for anyone interested in Texas history or the culture of mapmaking, and the illustrations are glorious.”
Texas Takes Shape guides readers on a journey through centuries of maps that have shaped and reshaped Texas. Clear and engaging essays accompany each map and explain not only the imagery and geographic detail but also the historical moment in which each map was created, fulfilling the book’s thesis that maps are both products and agents of history.
