Caprock Chronicles: Ozark Trails and the OTA aided travelers, promoted better roads

EDITOR'S NOTE: "Caprock Chronicles" is a weekly series of short articles and essays that examine the life, people, events and historical places of our region's past. Paul Carlson, professor emeritus of history at Texas Tech, writes or edits each contribution in the series. Today's essay discusses W.H. Harvey's contribution to building better highways in America even as he sought to promote his Ozark Mountains' health spa.

The Ozark Trails movement was a publicity scheme, but it was also an effort in the early 20th century to promote good highways.

The trails existed through much of Arkansas and its bordering states including Texas, and at first, they were aimed at getting people to the Ozark Mountain vacation resort of William Hope "Coin" Harvey, a lawyer, presidential campaign organizer, political tract writer, promoter and hotel builder.

More importantly, the Ozark Trails promoted better highways and greater automobile travels, and they did much - though the amount might be hard to measure - in West Texas.

They represented a forerunner to Route 66, helped to create the Texas Highway Department, encouraged such roads as the Bankhead Highway through Texas and otherwise promoted the use of automobiles for overland travel.

In 1900, William Harvey purchased 320 acres of land near Rogers, Arkansas. The next year, he began developing the site as a major - and fabulous - health and vacation retreat. He built a 5-mile-long railroad from the town of Lowell in the state's extreme northwest corner to a depot near his resort, which he called Monte Ne, or "mountain waters."

Harvey had big plans for his sophisticated health spa, but they did not all work out. In 1910, he abandoned the railroad between Lowell and Monte Ne.

With the railroad's demise, Harvey needed an alternate access to his resort. Thus, was born in 1913 the Ozark Trails Association, designed to promote a series of improved roadways connecting his isolated health spa to four adjacent states.

Harvey and his Ozark Trails Association did not plan to build the roads. Rather, they wanted to promote good roads and educate local communities on various economic advantages for improved highways.

They also provided information on highway design. Local folks, they hoped, would build and maintain the roads, and the association would promote and publicize, and, by extension, get people to Monte Ne.

Interest grew. By 1916, Oklahoma City had replaced Monte Ne as the headquarters for the Ozark Trails Association, and that year 7,000 OTA delegates attended a convention in the city.

The next year, reportedly, between 10,000 and 20,000 people attended an OTA meeting in Amarillo, thus temporarily doubling the city's population. For West Texas, an important result of the meeting was the establishment of several Ozark Trails highways or branch routes. Many towns wanted to be part of the system, at least they did if they were not part of some other major named highway, such as the Bankhead.

To be designated as part of the trail, some towns agreed to pay the OTA Association and to put up signs or posters to mark the route.

There was as yet no national or Texas system of numbered highways. Named highways, such as the Lincoln and Bankhead, were increasing in number, and promoters sought markers, signs and other insignia to identify their roads. They might put colored ribbons on trees in rural areas or paint their symbol on a barn or boulders or telephone poles. Some highways built concrete posts.

The Ozark Trails highways used diamond-shaped signs with a white background and a green "OT" between two green stripes.

After 1918, the OTA encouraged towns to build pyramids - or obelisks. The plan called for approximately 25-foot-tall concrete pyramids, painted white and green, with a bit of travel information and with lights for illumination that helped travelers at night.

The number of obelisks built is unknown, but they appeared in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. Only seven of them survive.

In West Texas, the obelisks appeared in Wellington, Estelline, Memphis, Farwell, Tulia, Dimmit, Nazareth, Tampico Station (in Hall County), and perhaps elsewhere along an old southern route of the Ozark Trails. The Texas pyramids survive in four places: Tulia, Dimmit, Wellington and Tampico Station (now an abandoned crossroads). Two markers survive in Oklahoma and one in New Mexico.

In the 1920s, the Ozark Trails highway system reached a peak. A numbering system on both national and state levels to identify highways had begun, and as it expanded, the need for named highways declined.

The old northern route of the Ozark Trails across Oklahoma and through the Texas Panhandle became Route 66. The OT's southern route declined in favor of various numbered highways.

Except for the few concrete obelisks that remain, Ozark Trails highways exist today only in memory.

Yet, Ozark Trails and the OTA aided travelers, promoted better roads and highways, supported the creation of highway departments and encouraged construction and maintenance of good roadways. They were at once both the result of an older "Good Roads" movement and the precursor of modern, numbered highways.