Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80)

The highway began as a Savannah automobile club's idea. Wikipedia says the Automobile Club of Savannah made a pathfinding tour across Georgia in July 1914, and a meeting in Columbus formed the association, incorporated in 1917. The western end was contested. San Diego boosters Stanley Hufflund and Ed Fletcher persuaded members in August 1918 to choose San Diego over Los Angeles, and in May 1919 the executive committee approved it and elected Fletcher president. Wikipedia adds that federal planners created U.S. 80 in 1925, largely along this route.

What the plaque says

Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80) In the early 20th century, soon after the development of the automobile, travelers, city officials and others began planning for a network of paved overland routes. In the era before the advent of the interstate highway system, road associations provided the vision and the promotion, and states and municipalities provided necessary capital. Early results were piecemeal and inconsistent, but the Good Roads Movement, the National Highway Association and similar organizations continued efforts to improve routes on a national scale. In 1914, the Automobile Club of Savannah, Georgia, proposed an "all-seasons" route stretching from its home base to Los Angeles. Interested towns and parties formed the Dixie Overland Highway Association (DOHA), with offices in Columbus, Georgia. The route, which passed through 75 U.S. counties, including Kaufman, was partially opened by the 1920s, with the western terminus later changed to San Diego. Along the route, travelers met significant obstacles, including what was known as the Forney Gap. Forney's portion of the road entered the city east of Mustang Creek and crossed through town, past the service stations and other businesses that opened to serve travelers. On the west side of town, as the landscape slopes downward to the floodplain of the East Fork of the Trinity River, the paved road stopped, leaving a slippery, muddy hill and a frequently flooded roadway. Despite such obstacles, DOHA's president, in a publicity stunt, made the length of the highway in record time in October 1926, traveling from San Diego to Savannah in just over 71 hours. Two months later, much of the highway became U.S. Highway 80. Its role as a primary interstate route was later superseded by Interstate 20. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 12 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 13 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 17 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 17 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Forney — steps away
• 1899 Automobile Trip — steps away
• William Madison McDonald — steps away
• The Forney Messenger — steps away