In the 1930s, Fort Stockton had three US highways converging just east of its busy downtown: The US 290, the US 67, and the US 285. (Source: Old Highway Maps of Texas (
visit link) ). Travelers on the OST passed by this very spot as they continued west on the OST through Fort Stockton.
This 1950s-vintage Googie style Phillips 66 is located at the corner of E Dickinson Street/Old Spanish Trail and N Alamo Street in Fort Stockton TX, which during the time of the OST would be where the OST loop into Fort Stockton would rejoin the main branch of the OST -- this station could get everyone on the OST, no matter which route through town they took!
Although it is no longer a Phillips 66, or even dispensing gasoline, there is no mistaking that distinctive Googie-upswept roof, which would have beckoned travelers to stop in and fill up here in this cool new gas station, during the hey day of the OST.
The OST Loop Route into Fort Stockton came in from the east along E Dickinson Boulevard, dipped southwest via N Alamo Street to N Spring Street to downtown Fort Stockton, then turned back towards the northwest on Callaghan Street to Railroad Avenue before heading north to rejoin W Dickinson Blvd and head west out of town.
These early Auto Routes were less about traveling in a straight line from point A to point B, and more about local economic development and tourism. For this reason, all of these early travel routes would pass through the center of the city before returning to the road out of town.
The history of the Old Spanish Trail is as varied as the areas it crosses on its journey from Jacksonville FL to San Diego CA. In Texas, the OST has had many routes, but by 1921 a predominantly southern route from Orange to San Antonio to El Paso had been formalized. Source: The Development of Highways in Texas:
A Historic Context of the Bankhead Highway and Other Historic Named Highways, by the Texas Historical Commission
(
visit link)
"The Old Spanish Trail largely overlapped with the “Southern National Highway,” as the route was named by the Texas Highway Commission in 1917. At that time, the agency formally incorporated the roadway as SH 3 in the new state highway system. (See Figure 183.) However, the route marked by the Old Spanish Trail Association included a wideranging variety of alignments other than SH 3; the most notable was the SH 27 alignments travelling through Kerrville, Sonora, and Junction en route to Fort Stockton.
Regardless of the name or designation used, the route quickly assumed a leading role in the state’s emerging highway system, in part, because it travelled to not only some of the state’s most important nodes of military installations (San Antonio) and industrial centers (the oil refineries in Houston and the Gold Triangle areas of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange), but also some of the state’s best known tourist destinations, parks, and recreational centers, such as the Alamo and Balmorrhea State Park."
By 1926, when the US Federal Highway System converted the old names Auto Tour Routes into a numbered system of US Highways, the OST was well established. At this time, parts of the OST in Texas were co-designated US 90, US 90Alt, US 87, US 80 and US 290.
The OST in Fort Stockton was part of the US 290 alignment that terminated northwest of Balmorhea at US 80 (The Bankhead Highway).