Bankhead Highway Through Arlington
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THE BANKHEAD HIGHWAY, OFTEN REFERRED TO LOCALLY AS THE “DALLAS PIKE” EAST OF CENTER STREET AND THE “FORT WORTH PIKE” WEST OF THAT ROAD, PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN ARLINGTON’S FUTURE BY CONNECTING IT TO DALLAS, FORT WORTH, AND THE REST OF THE U.S. THE PIKE, FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE OLD DALLAS-FORT WORTH ROAD, WAS ACTUALLY IN USE AS A WAGON ROAD LONG BEFORE ARLINGTON WAS PLATTED. THE ROAD, NOW ABRAM STREET, BEING THE BUSIEST STRETCH OF HIGHWAY IN TEXAS, WAS DESIGNATED AS STATE HIGHWAY 1 BY THE TEXAS HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT, WHICH WAS FORMED IN 1917 TO CREATE A STATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM. IN 1920, AS PART OF THE “GOOD ROADS” PROJECT, THE BANKHEAD HIGHWAY SYSTEM, NAMED FOR JOHN WILLIS BANKHEAD, WAS DESIGNED AS A PORTION OF THE NEW NATIONAL AUTO TRAIL SYSTEM, RUNNING FROM WASHINGTON, D.C. TO SAN DIEGO. THE ROAD MOSTLY FOLLOWED STATE HIGHWAY 1, AND WOULD BE BUILT ALONG DIVISION STREET IN ARLINGTON. THE CHOSEN SAFER ROUTE WAS ENTIRELY NEW CONSTRUCTION, 25 FEET WIDE AND EIGHT INCHES THICK, COVERING 5.84 MILES FROM THE DALLAS COUNTY LINE TO THE WEST SIDE OF ARLINGTON. BY DESIGN, RAIL CROSSINGS WERE ELIMINATED INCLUDING “DEATH CROSSING” WEST OF TOWN. THE HIGHWAY WAS DECLARED OPEN TO TRAFFIC IN NOV. 1922. OVER TIME, THE HIGHWAY HAS EXPANDED AND SOME OF ITS EARLY FEATURES NO LONGER EXIST INCLUDING JOHNSON CREEK BRIDGE’S DECORATIVE HANDRAIL AND A PEDESTRIAN UNDERPASS AT THE MASONIC HOME. IN 1926, STATE HIGHWAY 1 WAS REDESIGNATED AS U.S. HWY 80 AND AGAIN AS STATE HWY 180 IN 1991. THE BANKHEAD HIGHWAY OPENED UP BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES TO MANY SMALLER TOWNS ALONG ITS ROUTE, INCREASED COMMERCE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST TEXAS, STIMULATED AUTOMOBILE TRANSPORTATION, AND INCREASED TOURISM. OVERALL, THE HIGHWAY WAS A MAJOR FACTOR IN TRANSFORMING ARLINGTON FROM A SMALL TOWN TO A THRIVING COMMUNITY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The road through Arlington began as a humble wagon route linking Dallas and Fort Worth long before the town was platted. Designated State Highway 1 by the new Texas Highway Department in 1917, it became part of the Bankhead Highway in 1920 — a transcontinental auto trail running from Washington, D.C., to San Diego under the national "Good Roads" movement. Opened as modern paved highway in 1922, complete with eliminated rail crossings, it transformed Arlington from a small town into a thriving community.
Why it matters
The Bankhead was one of America's first coast-to-coast auto highways, and its arrival shows how the automobile age remade small towns into engines of commerce and tourism.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early twentieth century, America was falling in love with the automobile — and discovering, to its frustration, that the nation's roads were dreadful. Most were unpaved, muddy in the rain and choked with dust in the dry, and long-distance travel by car was an adventure more than a convenience. Out of that frustration grew the Good Roads Movement, a nationwide push to build the modern paved highways a motoring country demanded.
Arlington sat between Dallas and Fort Worth, and the road linking those cities ran right through it — known locally as the Dallas Pike east of Center Street and the Fort Worth Pike to the west. That route was old, far older than the town's own plat: it had served as a wagon road when this was still open country, long before Arlington existed as a place on the map.
When Texas created its Highway Department in 1917 to build a statewide system, this heavily traveled corridor was designated State Highway 1 — a fitting number for what the marker calls the busiest stretch of highway in the state. The stage was set for a humble wagon route to become part of something national.
People & events
In 1920, as part of the Good Roads effort, the Bankhead Highway system was organized as a portion of the new national auto trail network, running all the way from Washington, D.C., to San Diego. It took its name from John Willis Bankhead, a champion of federal road-building. Through Arlington, the route largely followed State Highway 1 and was laid along Division Street.
The builders did not simply pave the old track. The chosen route was safer, entirely new construction — 25 feet wide and eight inches thick, running 5.84 miles from the Dallas County line to the west side of Arlington. By design it eliminated dangerous rail crossings, among them a spot grim enough to have earned the name "Death Crossing" west of town. The finished highway was declared open to traffic in November 1922.
As the years passed, the road kept changing. Some early flourishes disappeared — the decorative handrail on the Johnson Creek Bridge, a pedestrian underpass at the Masonic Home. The designations shifted too: State Highway 1 became U.S. Highway 80 in 1926, and later State Highway 180 in 1991. But its effect on Arlington was lasting, helping turn a small town into a thriving community.
Its place in the American story
The Bankhead was one of America's first coast-to-coast auto highways, part of the named-trail era that came before the numbered federal system most drivers know today. These early transcontinental routes stitched the country together for the automobile age and proved that ordinary people could, and would, drive across the whole nation if only the roads existed.
What happened to Arlington happened to countless towns along such routes. A good highway meant commerce, tourism, and opportunity: travelers stopped for fuel, food, and lodging, and businesses sprang up to serve them. The marker's own account — increased commerce between East and West Texas, a surge in automobile travel and tourism — is a compact version of how the car remade small-town America.
The road's engineering details point to a national story too. Eliminating rail crossings, widening and thickening the roadbed, choosing safety over simply following the old path — these reflect the professionalizing of American road-building in the 1910s and 1920s, when states created highway departments and turned wagon tracks into engineered highways.
If you visit
The fascinating thing about this site is that the history is beneath your wheels. The corridor the marker describes still carries traffic through Arlington today, so you can drive a piece of a route that once ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific and feel the through-line from wagon road to modern street.
Come as a bit of a detective. Some of the highway's early features are gone — the decorative handrail on the Johnson Creek Bridge, the pedestrian underpass at the Masonic Home — so part of the pleasure is imagining what once stood where, and appreciating how thoroughly a living road erases and rewrites itself over a century. The names themselves are layers of history: Dallas Pike, Fort Worth Pike, State Highway 1, U.S. 80, State Highway 180.
For a road-trip traveler this is an especially fitting stop, because you arrive by doing exactly what the marker celebrates — driving. Give a thought, as you pull away, to the crossing once so deadly it was simply called "Death Crossing," and to the engineers who set out in 1922 to make the journey you're taking safe.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Willis Bankhead
Related events
- · Good Roads Movement
Themes & tags
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