The Sutton County Courthouse with its windmill offered travelers on the OST a place to get some water for their cars and themselves, before turning onto a nice new spiffy section of road paid for by Federal funds.
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 traveled 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 that passed through Sonora was part of the US 290 alignment that terminated northwest of Balmorhea at US 80 (The Bankhead Highway).
This stretch of the OST, designated US 290 until the early 1980s, was an early recipient of Federal highway funding, as evidenced by the small FAP Marker under a live oak at the nearby corner of Water Ave and Main Street.
The marker is a square concrete post with a brass shield. The shield contains information about the route and the project, as follows:
"TEXAS
F.A.P. [Federal Aid Primary] 379
Sta. 0+00
<-----
LENGTH: 22.691 MI.
BUILT: 1935"
This Federal Aid Primary designation proves that early Federal Highway funds were used to improve this section of the old US 290, AKA The Old Spanish Trail, because it was considered one oif the primary highways of Texas.
The project, No. 379, was funded in 1935 to improve the part of the US 290 that ran in front of the Courthouse before turning down Main Street. The OST route in west Texas had been co-designated with US 290 in Nov of 1926, when the US highway system was adopted.
For more on the Federal Aid Project for highways and more early US highway history, see here: (
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"The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1921 (P.L. 67-87, 42 Stat. 212) divided highways into two categories: primary (interstate) and secondary (intercounty). It also gave limited federal aid to a system of highways to be designated by each state, not to exceed 7% of the state’s total mileage.
The act stated that each state would be responsible for maintaining the highways constructed with federal funds, and that failure to do so would result in the work being done under direct federal supervision with funds which would otherwise be available to that state for construction.
Congress saw highway and road building as a job stimulant when the economy soured in 1929 and responded by increasing funds for construction of more highways and roads. In April 1930, Congress voted to amend the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1916 and authorized and appropriated $50 million in addition to the $75 million already authorized and appropriated for FY1931. The act also provided $125 million for road construction in FY1932 and FY1933 (P.L. 71-90, 46 Stat. 141)."