Goody! A Road. Thank a bicyclist. |
Read my Red River Historian's Blog entry about the Good Roads Movement. |
The Bankhead Highway (US 67) near Fulton, Arkansas. |
This used to be a gas station on US 80 west of Palo Pinto, Texas. The Bankhead Highway, one of the earliest automobile routes in the southwest, encompassed many numbered federal highways. In the Red River Valley, they include US 67 (until Dallas) and US 80 (west of Dallas). |
When the federal government proposed paving the Robert E. Lee Highway in Oklahoma, over 2,000 people turned out at a 1922 convention to voice their support. This highway is now known as US 70. |
West of Lawton, Oklahoma sits an old alignment of US 62. Today, US 62 is a four-lane, divided highway, but it used to be a narrow road that traversed the rugged landscape of the Wichita Mountains. A series of bridges cross the Salt Fork of the Red River. |
Learn more about the Good Roads Movement (in Arkansas, anyway) in my book, The Red River Valley in Arkansas: Gateway to the Southwest |
Questions or comments? E-mail me: robin@redriverhistorian.com |
Dwight D. Eisenhower watches as a transport truck is pulled out of the morass during the 1919 transcontinental convoy. (National Archives) |
Soldiers manning the 1920 transcontinental convoy along the Bankhead Highway (today's U.S. 67 and U.S. 80) destroy an inadequate bridge in order to shore up a new one for their trucks. (Texas State Library) |
The Durant family from Durant, Oklahoma on their bicycles in downtown Durant. (Triple-rant!) (Oklahoma Historical Society) |
Giving up private roads in favor of government-funded highways did not go down without a fight. Learn more about Red River's bridges over troubled waters... |