Old Spanish Trail (auto trail)

For other uses, see Old Spanish Trail (disambiguation).

The Old Spanish Trail auto highway (the OST) once spanned the country with a full 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of roadway from ocean to ocean crossing 67 counties and eight states along the Southern border of the United States. Work on the auto highway began in 1915 and, by the 1920s, the trail linked St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California, with its center and headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The cities in between boasted a shared heritage of Spanish missions, forts and Spanish colonization.

Future

Much of that trail still exists, and preparations have already begun for a decade-long Centennial Celebration to begin in 2019 and end with a 2029 motorcade grand finale from St. Augustine to San Diego. The present-day, all-volunteer Old Spanish Trail Centennial Celebration Association OST100 is collecting oral histories, travel logs and news articles related to the Old Spanish Trail in order to conserve the roadways, businesses and historic sites of the original Old Spanish Trail auto highway both physically and in the memory of the American people.

The current work of revitalization, historic preservation, public/private partnerships, restoration, and road enhancements, follows the lead of the original founders of the OST, who involved greatly diverse interests in building and beautifying the original roadway.

History Details

Route

The OST largely follows what later became U.S. Highway 90 in the east and U.S. Highway 80 in the west

Texas Route

In eastern Texas the Old Spanish Trail can still be seen in many places. The trail runs alongside Interstate 10 through Orange and Vidor; when the trail reaches the Neches River, it merges with Interstate 10 crossing the Purple Heart Bridge, then detours through Downtown Beaumont. While in downtown the trail meets College Street and goes directly east from there to Liberty.

A section of the trail became a street, still named Old Spanish Trail, in Houston, running though the Texas Medical Center complex just south of downtown, connecting it with the Third Ward, the University of Houston, and the East End.

External links

• Old Spanish Trail centennial website
• History of the Old Spanish Trail
• The Old Spanish Trail - americanroads.us