Official Map of the Highway System of Texas
From the earliest foot paths to modern highways, people have traversed Texas to make connections. Historic maps provide a glimpse into these journeys. The creation of a trail system through early Texas, the arrival of railroads in the late 19th century, and the superhighways in use today were a cumulative work of many centuries and peoples, though the builders would not have thought of themselves as collaborators. Historic maps provide a glimpse into these journeys. Through the cartographic resources of the Texas General Land Office and the personal collection of Frank and Carol Holcomb of Houston, Connecting Texas: 300 Years of Trails, Rails, and Roads invites you to learn about how Texas and Texans have connected over the last three centuries. The exhibit runs at the Witte Museum in San Antonio through September 2018.
Like the rest of the country at the turn of the century, Texas desperately needed reliable roads to encourage commerce. Rail lines blossomed after the Reconstruction period, but still required feeder roads for farmers to transfer their produce to local depots.[1] Texas A&M University (TAMU), at the time still a college, conducted studies that concluded that Texas roads were wholly inadequate.[2] In answer to the rise in popularity of automobiles and the lack of initial capital for large-scale road expansion, the Texas Legislature passed an amendment in 1904 that authorized counties to issue bonds for public road improvement. There was a Texas Highway Commission in place, but the Texas Highway Department was not established until 1917.[3]
Produced primarily as a tourist map for Texans and visitors and to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Texas’ independence from Mexico, the Official Map of the Highway System of Texas represented a boom in construction over less than thirty years and features every major population center in the state during the early 1930s. A far cry from the faint trails of the 1830s and dirt paths of the 1900s, both intra- and inter-state routes indicate increasing amounts of commercial and recreational traffic in 1936.
Red and black lines depict U.S. and state highways respectively. While many of the roads shown are paved, there are still several “earth” roads, most notably to the west of the 100th meridian. When the Texas Highway Department was established, there were an estimated 148,000 miles of roads in Texas, but few of them were paved. By 1930, just six years before the map was issued, Texas boasted 18,000 miles of highways, and about one-third of them were paved.[4] Highway 81, which was used as a guideline for Interstate 35 within the next decade, connected Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo. In testament to the links between modern and pioneer-era transportation, Highway 81 was built over the route of an old military road. A special reference is made to the enticing fact that “There are no toll bridges on the Texas Highway System.”
The map also features photos of several state landmarks. The Texas Capitol is distinguished by its signature pink granite. The Alamo appears labeled as the “Shrine of Texas Liberty.” Newly constructed buildings on the Dallas Fair Park grounds herald the Centennial Exposition. On the map’s verso, a collage of notable sites within the state is pictured, including the other San Antonio missions, Sam Houston’s campground at San Jacinto, several military bases, and scenes of agriculture and industry.
The lyrics to “Texas Over All,” a song written by state highway engineer Gibb Gilchrist, appear under the six flags in the lower right corner of the map. During his ten years as a highway engineer, Gilchrist administered a highway development program that was responsible for implementing the much-needed farm-to-market system. Shortly after the map was published, Gilchrist was appointed dean of the Texas A&M University School of Engineering. He became president of the university in 1944 and the first chancellor of the A&M system in 1948.[5] While there were over one hundred institutions of higher education in the state by the centennial, the only one represented within the map itself is A&M. There is a small picture of the ruins of the Baylor College campus at Independence in the collage on the verso, but it is the only other educational institution represented. This is an interesting omission, as Gilchrist attended both Southwestern University [Georgetown] and the University of Texas [Austin].
After being issued in 1936, the map was updated and reissued once more in February 1937. Far less decorative than the centennial commemorative edition, it nevertheless included insets of major Texas cities around the border of the map, a collage of famous sites on the verso, and showed further progress on the highway system of Texas.[6] This map is not especially rare, as there are 15 other instances of its existence in other collections according to WorldCat.[7]
[1] Texas, “Texas Roads and Highways.,” HathiTrust, 4, accessed August 02, 2018, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015023083630.
[2] Ibid., 5.
[3] Ibid., 10.
[4] Ibid., 15.
According to the 2016 Texas Department of Transportation Roadway Inventory Annual Reports (the most recent report currently available online), there were 80,483 miles of highways in the state, a number that has surely grown in the last two years. (Accessed 8/3/18.)
[5] Handbook of Texas Online, Christina Irene van Doorninck, “GILCHRIST, GIBB,” accessed August 02, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fgi14.
[6] TEXAS, “Official Map of the Highway System of Texas Corrected to Feb. 15th 1937 by TEXAS on Oldimprints.com,” Oldimprints.com, accessed August 02, 2018, https://www.oldimprints.com/pages/books/49102/texas/official-map-of-the-highway-system-of-texas-corrected-to-feb-15th-1937.
[7] http://www.worldcat.org/title/official-map-of-the-highway-system-of-texas/oclc/53221257&referer=brief_results (Accessed August 3, 2018).
