Want proof that this gas station was built to serve the motoring public clattering by on the Old Spanish Trail? How about 3 gas pumps on this 1930s station in Fort Stockton, Texas, which has never been very populated.
This large 1930s gas station stands at the corner of Main Street and West second Street near the Pecos County Courthouse, a significant point of interest on the Old Spanish Trail.
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.
Blasterz like how this gas station was set catty-cornered to the street, so that two lanes of cars could come through the station: one under the station's brick canopy and one exposed to the elements. This would have allowed travelers from either direction to pull straight into the gas station and then continue on their way. It's very efficient design, which undoubtedly is why this vintage gas station has been restored and repurposed into a dry cleaner shop. The same convenience that allowed people to drive up and get gas in the Old Spanish Trail days, now allows people in Fort Stockton to drop off the dry cleaning.
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)."
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.