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.
Old Fort Stockton is located along Spring Street, the route of the OST Loop into downtown.
When the fort was founded in 1859, it was located alongside the famed Comanche Springs, an ancient oasis of fresh water in the desert, used by animals, Spanish explorers, and native Indian tribes for thousands of years. By the time of the OST, the springs were drying up and had become intermittent. By the time of the end of the OST, the springs were completely dry, victims of overpumping.
In the 1920s, old Fort Stockton would have been an interesting ruin to explore, but not a great place to picnic because there were no trees (then, or now in 2016). Most of the fort was as ruin, but the old Officer's Quarters after abandonment in 1886 became private homes.
From the Handbook of Texas: (
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"FORT STOCKTON. Fort Stockton, constructed of adobe and named for Lt. Edward Dorsey Stockton, an officer in the First Infantry who had died in San Antonio in 1857, was established by the United States Army on January 17, 1859, at Comanche Springs, which was within the site of the present city of Fort Stockton, for the protection of the mail service, travelers, and freighters.
Comanche Springs was on the Comanche war trail into Mexico, the upper and lower San Antonio-El Paso-San Diego roads, the Butterfield Overland Mail route, and the San Antonio-Chihuahua Trail, and near the Pecos River-New Mexico road. Capt. Arthur T. Lee, commanding Company C, Eighth Infantry, on order of Col. Carlos A. Waite, who commanded all federal troops in Texas, abandoned the post in April 1861. On June 26 the post was reoccupied by Capt. Charles L. Pyron, in command of Company B, Second Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles. It was abandoned by the Confederates in August 1862, after Gen. Henry H. Sibley's defeat in New Mexico.
On July 21, 1867, Fort Stockton, in ruins after the Civil War, was reoccupied by Gen. Edward Hatch, who made it the headquarters for the Ninth United States Cavalry, a regiment of black troops. Hatch built a new post nearby at a cost of $82,000 on land the federal government neither owned nor had leased. Except for the stone guardhouse, the buildings had stone foundations, adobe walls, and dirt roofs. The troops quartered at the post were used for patrols, escorts, and scouts, largely against the Apaches.
In 1882, after the Apaches had been defeated, the army began withdrawing the troops. The last contingent, a company of the Third Cavalry and two companies of the Sixteenth Infantry, commanded by Maj. George A. Purington, left on June 26–27, 1886.
By providing protection to travelers and settlers, a market for stockmen, irrigation farmers, and merchants, and employment for freighters, mechanics, and laborers, Fort Stockton promoted the establishment and development of a thriving community. Since their abandonment by the military, some of the officers' quarters have been used continuously for residences. In 1936 the state erected a marker at the site of the fort on the grounds of the Pecos County Courthouse."
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 (
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"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)."