One correction, Robert: though the big influx of Zionists came in the 1920s, the First Aliya actually started around 1880. Petach Tikva was founded in the 1880s, Tel Aviv in 1906.
I found this interesting site by an Israeli map collector, who has a map (actually a collection of maps) made by The Palestine Society in the 1870s. This was one of those Victorian English societies (it still exists) dedicated to measuring and mapping everything. What is most interesting about the maps is that they are detailed and they delineate the settled areas, which are tiny.
How the Map was Made
The Foundation of British Exploration of Palestine” created in 1865 by the elite of the British upper class of the time, Lords, academics, clergymen, and the very wealthy. The fund set up its goal to conduct researches in the fields of archeology, history, geography, and ethnography in what was then called “Palestine”.
The expedition numbered several dozens of people, among them expert cartographers, and heading it were well-known people: [Sir Charles] Warren, [Claude R.] Conder, [Horatio H.] Kitchener. The project was begin in 1871 and completed in 1878. The production of the printed map lasted several years, and when it appeared it became the most detailed precise map of the Land of Israel. Due to its size, the map was printed in 26 separate sections, in four colors, by lithography.
What we Learn from the Map
The uniqueness of the map is that the British surveyors marked with great accuracy the borders of every settlement and noted in special colors the populated sections of the settlement. It is possible through this map to ascertain the size of each settlement in the Land during that period, from the Litani River in the north and as far south as Beer Sheba.
The map represents by cartography what Mark Twain described in a literary form: a desolate arid wilderness, almost empty. Using a ruler it is a simple matter to determine the size of each settlement. When examining the villages we see that their areas are tiny. The largest of them are 150 by 100 meters. They comprise barely two rows of houses. The color legend indicates that Acre, for example, was then only partially inhabited. Entire areas were empty of people, exactly as we had learned in school, and likewise the Jezreel Valley and the Jordan Valley and all the areas that the Jewish pioneers later brought to life. ...
Haifa is marked on the map by a rectangle of three by seven millimeters. Each millimeter represents 63 meters in actual terms. This means that the Haifa area was 190 by 440 meters in size. The German Colony is outside the Haifa perimeter, and each house is exactly drawn
Nazareth was then a little larger than Haifa. Its shape is in the form of a gourd whose longer end is 600 meters and its smaller end some 300 meters. Even Tiberias is larger than Haifa – 300 by 600 meters. “Greater” Jaffa was only a little town – 240 by 540 meters. Shekh Munis, where the Tel Aviv University now stands, was a tiny village 90 by 180 meters. So, also, Usfiyeh, Yehud, and many other villages.
Jerusalem, within its walls, was, in fact, large – 1000 by 1000 meters. There was nothing outside the walls [today the walled Old City is a tiny portion of modern Jerusalem. nsc], and we know (not from the map) that within its walls there was always a Jewish majority.
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