Ozark Trails Association

Until nearly 1920 the roads of Swisher County were crude paths scraped in the earth. That year the seven Texas counties on the route, with Curry and Roosevelt counties in New Mexico, raised $10,000 for the markers, and the trail of graded and improved roads grew into a real network. By the mid-1920s Tulia was linked to Nazareth, Dimmitt and Bovina by State Highway 86, to Canyon and Amarillo by U.S. 385 and to Silverton by State Highway 80. Of the association's surviving obelisks, others stand at Dimmitt, Farwell, Wellington and Stroud, Oklahoma.

What the plaque says

Ozark Trails Association Founded in 1913 to mark and promote an automobile route across several states, the Ozark Trails Association was the brainchild of William Hope Harvey of Arkansas, who wanted to improve roads to his Ozark mountain retreat. Thousands of members from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri attended annual meetings of the association, which also sought to promote tourism and educate the public to the need for better highways and roads. The southern route of the Ozark Trail extended across the Texas panhandle through Collingsworth, Childress, Hall, Briscoe, Swisher, Castro and Parmer counties. In 1920, members from these Texas counties and two New Mexico counties met and voted to follow the lead of the national group in placing reinforced concrete signposts along the route in their counties. James E. Swepston of Tulia led this effort and was elected president of the national association at its 1920 annual meeting. The concrete obelisk placed in Tulia (85 feet northwest) originally denoted the distance from Tulia to various towns on the trail. It retains its identity as a local landmark, and in 2000, the Texas Historical Commission designated the Ozark Trail marker as a State Archeological Landmark. The obelisk also is a reminder of the Ozark Trails Association (disbanded in 1924), one of many private highway associations to sponsor automobile routes before the federal government began numbering and marking such highways after World War I. (2001)

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Swisher County — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Tulia — steps away
• J.O. Bass Blacksmith Shop — steps away
• Rose Hill Cemetery — 1.4 mi