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 section of (
visit link) ). Travelers on the OST passed by this very spot as they continued west on the OST.
From the 19-teens to the early 1950s, travelers along the OST at Fort Stockton could watch the steam locomotives of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient RR (and later the Santa Fe, which purchased the KCM&O in 1928) making freight pickups and drops.
After 1950, OST travelers would have seen many of the new diesel and maybe some old steamers here and there in freight operations. The Santa Fe railroad began retiring and giving away or scrapping their old steam locomotives in the early 1950s. By the late-1950s, only the luckiest OST travelers would have seen any of the old steam locomotives pushing freight. See: (
visit link)
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, but 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).