It began in 1916. Sponsored by
Senator John Hollis Bankhead, pathfinders fanned out towards the southwest to
find alternate auto routings across the U.S. The routings that grew out of
these multiple path finding
trips would eventually adopt his name and become known as the Bankhead Highway
(BH). In 1920, a transcontinental convoy set out from
Washington, D.C. to follow those early pathfinders and determine the best 'all-weather' military road across a United
States that had not yet developed the infrastructure for what would become the
greatest car-oriented culture the world had ever seen.
Swinging southwest out of Washington, an early BH swung across
the northern fringes of the southern states, passed through T
exas and ultimately
meandered over to San Diego, California and the far Pacific Ocean.
After a Good Roads Organization conference in 1920 to solidify the
official routing, the BH quickly became an
important transcontinental auto route. As was common in those
days, the BH developed a loose-knit promotional organization that published its own
maps, promoted local backers, and even put up local highway markers so that
travelers along these early auto trails would be sure to follow the 'right and
best' auto trail through the area.
About the mid-1920's, another promotional organization and proposed auto routing also came into
being: the Broadway of America (BOA). From Broadway, New
York to Broadway, San Diego, this group promoted their road as
the fastest and best 'all-weather' high gear highway across the country.
As can be seen by the brochure image (right), this
group also published maps and recruited local backers to promote its auto route
as the road of choice to points out west. The BOA crowd never tried to
build new roads, but took bits and pieces of existing roads and tied
them together into a network. For some reason, the BOA crowd almost exclusively followed the pathways as laid 
down
by the earlier BH. Was there an affiliation between these
two organizations? The history is unclear. But what IS clear, is that this
roadway, this Bankhead Highway, this Broadway of America, would become one of the
great auto trails of an early 20th century America and would leave its mark upon
the landscape from coast to coast. The history is there, we just have to
find it. For example, this pic from 'back in the day' is of a building
(see circled building in photo) in downtown Garland, TX that today, is seeing
new life as a
coffee shop. (Pic supplied by Garland's
Councilman John Willis)
Help finding those early alignments
is here!
A terrific find! After long conversations with
the Library of Congress, I've finally come into possession of the 1922
Bankhead Highway Tourist Guide - a detailed mapping of the BH as it existed
in 1921. Below, I've created individual state pages where you may
see the detailed map photos of hat state. It is my sincerest hope
that this wonderful plethora of new found information helps impel you,
the inquisitive roadie reader, out of the computer and into the car to
find some snippets of these oft long forsaken bits of American roadside
history. Feel free to drop me a note and photo or two as who
knows, I may never make it all the way out to the east coast to find all
of these lost segments. The first three pages of the guide are
below. The rest are broken out by state below. The images
themselves are very large so you can see the detail, so they can be slow
loading. A pain I
know, but you will enjoy the fact that you will be able to 'really 'zoom
in' on these maps. Enjoy!
Click on a state below for the detailed map images of that
area!
