Ozark Trails Association
Tulia, Swisher County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1913 to mark and promote an automobile route across several states, the Ozark Trails Association was the brainchild of William Hope Harvey of Arkansas, who wanted to improve roads to his Ozark mountain retreat. Thousands of members from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri attended annual meetings of the association, which also sought to promote tourism and educate the public to the need for better highways and roads. The southern route of the Ozark Trail extended across the Texas panhandle through Collingsworth, Childress, Hall, Briscoe, Swisher, Castro and Parmer counties. In 1920, members from these Texas counties and two New Mexico counties met and voted to follow the lead of the national group in placing reinforced concrete signposts along the route in their counties. James E. Swepston of Tulia led this effort and was elected president of the national association at its 1920 annual meeting. The concrete obelisk placed in Tulia (85 feet northwest) originally denoted the distance from Tulia to various towns on the trail. It retains its identity as a local landmark, and in 2000, the Texas Historical Commission designated the Ozark Trail marker as a State Archeological Landmark. The obelisk also is a reminder of the Ozark Trails Association (disbanded in 1924), one of many private highway associations to sponsor automobile routes before the federal government began numbering and marking such highways after World War I. (2001)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1913 by Arkansas promoter William Hope Harvey, the Ozark Trails Association was one of many private groups that marked and boosted long automobile routes before federal highway numbering. Its southern branch crossed the Texas Panhandle, and in 1920 James Swepston of Tulia led the placement of reinforced-concrete signpost obelisks along the route, one of which still stands near this spot. The association disbanded in 1924, its work soon absorbed by the numbered federal highway system.
Why it matters
The Ozark Trails obelisk is a relic of the grassroots "good roads" movement that stitched together America's first coast-reaching auto routes in the years before government took over the highways.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before and after World War I, America fell in love with the automobile — and then discovered it had almost nowhere decent to drive it. Outside of cities, most "roads" were dirt tracks that turned to mud with the first rain, unmarked and unmapped, so that a long trip was less a matter of steering than of guessing. There were no route numbers, no shields, no federal highway system at all.
Into that gap stepped the "Good Roads" movement: a grassroots crusade of drivers, businessmen, and boosters who argued that decent long-distance roads were essential to modern life. Since government wasn't yet building them, private associations took on the job themselves — naming a route, promoting it, and marking it so travelers could actually follow it across state lines.
The Texas Panhandle in this era was wide, thinly settled country where the promise of a marked automobile highway meant a real shot at commerce and tourism. A named trail crossing your county could put your town on the map, quite literally, and local leaders competed to make sure the route ran their way.
People & events
The Ozark Trails Association, founded in 1913, was the brainchild of William Hope Harvey of Arkansas — a colorful promoter better known by the nickname "Coin" — who wanted better roads leading to his mountain retreat in the Ozarks. What began as one man's convenience grew into a six-state movement, drawing thousands of members from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri to annual meetings that doubled as rallies for tourism and better highways.
The association's southern route swept across the Texas Panhandle through a string of counties, and in 1920 the Texas members, joined by two New Mexico counties, voted to follow the national group's lead and plant reinforced-concrete signposts along their stretch. Leading that effort was James E. Swepston of Tulia, whose work earned him the presidency of the national association at its 1920 meeting.
The concrete obelisk that still stands nearby — about eighty-five feet from the marker — originally listed the distances from Tulia to other towns along the trail, a stone road-sign for a time before printed maps could be trusted. It outlived its own association, which disbanded in 1924, and in 2000 the Texas Historical Commission recognized its significance by naming it a State Archeological Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The Ozark Trails story captures a brief, remarkable moment when America's highway network was built from the bottom up. Before the government stepped in, the map of long-distance travel was drawn by private clubs — dozens of named trails, each promoted and marked by volunteers and boosters, overlapping and competing across the country.
That era ended by design. After World War I the federal government began numbering and marking highways, replacing the patchwork of named trails with the orderly shield-and-number system travelers still rely on. The private associations, their job effectively finished, faded away; the Ozark Trails Association's dissolution in 1924, just as the numbered system was taking shape, is a small marker of that national handoff from grassroots effort to government infrastructure.
What survives is the concrete itself. Obelisks like the one at Tulia are among the few physical relics of the trail-marking age, and they tell a story most drivers never think about: that the roads beneath them were once a citizens' project, argued over in county meetings and paid for by local pride, before they were ever a government responsibility.
If you visit
Look about eighty-five feet northwest of the marker for the real star — the concrete obelisk, a genuine hundred-year-old road sign that once told travelers how far it was to the next town down the trail. It's easy to walk past, so slow down and give it the attention a survivor deserves.
Part of the pleasure here is the double layer of history: a marker that explains a monument, and a monument that explains a vanished way of getting around. Stand beside the obelisk and picture the era it served — motorists inching across an unmarked Panhandle, trusting a painted route and a stone pillar to keep them from getting lost.
It's an ideal quick stop on a Panhandle drive, especially satisfying for anyone who loves the back-story of the open road. As you pull back onto the modern numbered highway, remember that the tidy shields overhead are the descendants of exactly this kind of homemade effort — and that a small Texas town, and a man named Swepston, helped plant one of its lasting landmarks.
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
- · William Hope Harvey
- · James E. Swepston
Related events
- · Good Roads Movement
Themes & tags
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