Bankhead Highway in Garland
Garland, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The early 20th century development of the automobile led to major changes in road systems throughout the U.S. The 1916 Federal Aid Road Act, which supplied matching funds to states for the upgrade of roads, was sponsored by Alabama Senator John H. Bankhead and required that states establish a highway department in order to receive federal disbursements; the act led to the creation of the Texas Highway Department in 1917. The Bankhead Highway, America's Second east-to-west transcontinental highway, was soon routed from Washington D.C. to San Diego. The Bankhead Highway's route through Texas included the major cities of Texarkana, Dallas, Fort Worth and El Paso, and passed through the Dallas County town of Garland. In 1919 Texas Bankhead Highway Association Secretary Arthur P. Dyer noted that Garland was the only town on the Texas route which had voluntarily organized and gone to work without asking for outside help. The people of Garland took advantage of the highway's potential for economic impact. Auto repair shops, restaurants and service stations were built along Main Street – the Highway's route through Garland – which was soon paved and curbed. Although the Bankhead Highway was officially designated as Texas Highway 1 in 1917, it also retained the official Bankhead name until 1926, when it became part of U.S. Highway 67. However, the old name remained attached to the Garland segment until the early 1950s. The road's importance diminished beginning in the 1950s, as most drivers opted to use the wider, safer and faster new Interstate system, but the Bankhead Highway is remembered for its significant place in the history of scores of Texas towns such as Garland. (2009)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As the automobile transformed America, the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act poured matching funds into highways and spurred creation of the Texas Highway Department in 1917. One result was the Bankhead Highway, the nation's second transcontinental route, running from Washington, D.C., to San Diego and passing straight down Main Street in Garland. Local boosters seized the opportunity, paving the road and lining it with repair shops, service stations, and restaurants until the Interstate era eclipsed it in the 1950s.
Why it matters
The Bankhead Highway marks the birth of the modern American road network and shows how a named transcontinental route could put a small town on the map and reshape its economy.
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Related people
- · John H. Bankhead
- · Arthur P. Dyer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
A.J. Head Service Station
Garland, TX
The Bankhead Highway—America's second transcontinental east-west route, born of the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act—ran through Garland and fueled a boom of roadside businesses. A.J. Head opened this filling station in 1947, and over the years it housed a tire shop, auto repair, welding, a bail bond office, and a discount store to serve highway travelers. Designed by Robert Otis Lagrone in the Streamline Moderne style, its curved brick wall and metal canopy captured the sleek, horizontal look popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
City of Wylie
Wylie, TX
Pioneers settled the east fork of the Trinity in the early 1850s, lured by water, prairie soil, and Peters Colony land grants, first clustering at a hamlet called Nickelville. When the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad laid track just north in 1886, the town relocated and took the name Wylie after the line's right-of-way agent. A second railroad, an onion boom that made it the self-styled 'Onion Capital,' and later Lake Lavon and a Dallas highway each reshaped its fortunes—and in the 1980s the TV series Dallas filmed here.
Robert and Marie Stubbs House
Dallas, TX
Robert Campbell Stubbs came to Dallas from Mississippi in 1887 and built a paving business just as the automobile age created enormous demand for modern streets; by 1922 he had patented a 'vibrolithic' paving method and was regarded as a leading national authority. His success paid for this stately Tudor-style home on fashionable Swiss Avenue, completed in 1926 and possibly designed by Dallas architect Otto H. Lang. Stubbs died a year later, and his widow Marie entertained here into 1940 before the house passed through use as apartments and back to a single family.
Junction of the Texas & Pacific and Houston & Texas Central Railroads
Dallas, TX
Dallas cemented its place as North Texas's commercial hub when the Texas & Pacific and Houston & Texas Central lines crossed here in 1873. City and county leaders had paid the H&TC $5,000 to bend its route toward town, then engineered a legislative rider forcing the T&P to cross near Browder's Springs — conveniently close to the courthouse — before sweetening the deal with bonds and right-of-way along what became Pacific Avenue. The result was one of Texas's first rail crossroads.