Bankhead Highway in Aledo

The Bankhead became Texas's State Highway 1. The Texas Historical Commission says the Bankhead Highway Association formed in 1916, and the road, which ran from Washington, D.C., to San Diego, was designated State Highway 1 in 1917. It crossed about 850 miles of Texas, through Texarkana, Dallas, Fort Worth, Weatherford, Abilene and El Paso, and was the first all-weather transcontinental highway in the nation. The commission also credits it with bringing highway tourism to Texas, and lists garages, gas stations, cafes, tourist courts, bridges and signs as the road's surviving companions.

What the plaque says

Bankhead Highway in Aledo Commonly referred to as the "Broadway of America," the Bankhead Highway linked cities and towns throughout the nation as one of the first transcontinental highways of the 1920s. In the wake of the first World War, the American government sought to ensure proper defense and military transportation through an extensive national highway system. Senator John Hollis Bankhead of Alabama, along with the National Good Roads Congress, organized the Bankhead Highway Association in 1916. This paved the way for modern American tourism, commercial travel and daily transit. The Bankhead Highway extends more than 900 miles within the state of Texas, from Texarkana to El Paso, totaling about one-third of the National Road's complete length. Initially, the City of Aledo was located one mile south of the Highway, which stretched from east to west through Parker County. The route currently establishes the northern boundary of the future city limits of Aledo. The segment of the Bankhead Highway which connects Watherford to Aledo, remains the most frequently utilized and longest, continuously-named portion of the entire road. Amidst the growing addition of new housing developments, one can still find remnants of old diary farms, as well as rows of sycamore trees planted in memory of WWI veterans. Today, the Bankhead Highway represents an important transitiion from the 19th century to the modern age. It is one of the most significant infrastructure developments in American History, connection people and communities from across the nation. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chandor Gardens — 12 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 14 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 14 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 16 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• City of Aledo — 1.3 mi
• Annetta Cemetery — 4.4 mi
• Lawson Daniel Gratz — 4.8 mi
• Isaac Parker — 7.2 mi