Bankhead Highway in Turkey

Bob Wills came to Hall County with his family in 1913, settling first on the Ogden Ranch between Memphis and Estelline, and he played his first dance in 1915. He fiddled at West Texas ranch dances for fourteen years, mixing frontier fiddle tunes with blues and jazz learned in the cotton fields, before leaving for Fort Worth in 1929. Turkey is home to the Bob Wills Museum and a Main Street monument to the King of Western Swing, and it holds the Bob Wills Reunion each April.

What the plaque says

Bankhead Highway in Turkey Increasing popularity of automobile travel in the early 20th century led to improved roads throughout the U.S. Alabama senator John H. Bankhead, staunch advocate of the Good Roads movement, sponsored the 1916 Federal Aid Road Act to provide matching funds to states. The Bankhead Highway was the first national highway created due to the act, establishing a transcontinental route from Washington, D.C. to San Diego. In April 1919, at the annual meeting of the Bankhead National Highway Association in Mineral Wells (Palo Pinto Co.), delegates debated two possible routes for the Bankhead through Texas. At the meeting, Samuel Porter Lacy of Turkey was a strong advocate for the highway to cross the Texas panhandle. The final decision resulted in two paths. The main road, the "All Texas Route," included Texarkana, Dallas, Fort Worth and El Paso. A northern alternative, designated the "Scenic Route," branched off in Hot Springs and crossed Oklahoma, the Texas plains and New Mexico before joining the main route in El Paso. E.H. Perry of Plainview stated "this route will prove to be of more benefit than three new railroads would, and thousands of tourists will pass over it and through here each year." Cities and towns on the highway reaped significant economic benefits. The Scenic Route, later renamed the Four States Division, included Childress, Estelline, Turkey, Quitaque, Silverton, Plainview, Olton, Muleshoe and Farwell. Main Street in Turkey served as the Bankhead route through town and had enough tourism and commerce in the 1920s to support twelve filling stations, two groceries, a bank, three automobile dealerships, and several other stores. The alignment through this area later became State Highway 86. The Four States Division of the Bankhead Highway made a lasting contribution to the social and economic growth of Turkey. (2023)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bob Wills Museum — steps away
  The old Turkey school, now holding Bob Wills's boots, hats, his father's fiddle and his barbershop tools, in the cotton town that fills each April for Bob Wills Day.
• Caprock Canyons State Park & Trailway — 9.1 mi
  Red canyons below the Caprock escarpment where the Texas State Bison Herd, descended from calves Mary Ann Goodnight saved in 1878, has right of way on the park roads.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Turkey — 0.2 mi
• Gasoline Cotton Gin — 7.6 mi
• The Ozark Trail at Tampico — 8.6 mi
• Lake Theo Folsom Bison Kill Site — 10 mi