Dixie Overland Highway (U. S. Highway 80)

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Dixie Overland Highway, out here in Kaufman County. Now, picture the early twentieth century. The automobile is barely out of its infancy, and already people (travelers, city officials, dreamers of all stripes) are looking at this vast country and thinking: somebody ought to pave it.

Before the interstate highway system was even a gleam in anybody's eye, it fell to road associations to do the visioning and the promotin', while states and municipalities scraped together the capital to actually pour concrete. The early results, as you might expect, were piecemeal and inconsistent. But organizations like the Good Roads Movement and the National Highway Association kept pushing, kept planning, kept insisting that America deserved something better than a muddy rut.

Then in 1914, the Automobile Club of Savannah, Georgia, put forward an idea with real ambition behind it: an all-seasons route, they called it, stretching from Savannah all the way to Los Angeles. Interested towns and parties rallied around the concept and formed the Dixie Overland Highway Association, with offices in Columbus, Georgia. The route they laid out wound through seventy-five United States counties (Kaufman County among them) and by the nineteen-twenties it was partially open.

In time, they shifted the western terminus all the way to San Diego, which only added to the grandeur of the whole undertaking. But grandeur and reality have a way of bumping into each other on the open road. And right here in Kaufman County, travelers ran straight into something locals called the Forney Gap.

The road came into Forney from the east, crossing Mustang Creek, running right through town past the service stations and businesses that had sprung up to serve the motoring public. That stretch was fine enough. But on the west side of town, where the land begins to slope down toward the floodplain of the East Fork of the Trinity River, well, that's where the pavement just stopped.

What waited instead was a slippery, muddy hill and a roadway that flooded with a frequency that would test the patience of a saint. You can imagine the scene: an optimistic motorist, full of confidence after a smooth run through town, suddenly staring down that hill, wondering what exactly they'd gotten themselves into. Now, obstacles have never stopped a good publicity stunt.

And DOHA's president decided the way to silence the skeptics was to drive the whole thing in record time. In October of 1926, he made the entire length of the highway, San Diego to Savannah, in just over seventy-one hours. Just sit with that for a moment.

The Forney Gap and all. Two months after that record run, much of the Dixie Overland Highway was folded into the newly designated United States Highway 80. It became a primary route for a generation of Americans moving goods and lives across the country.

Eventually, Interstate 20 came along and took over that role; the way of things, the newer road swallowing the legacy of the old one. But out here in Kaufman County, the ground remembers. That slope down to the East Fork of the Trinity River is still right where it always was, and somewhere under the modern surface, the ghost of the Forney Gap is waiting for you to give it a little respect.

What the marker says

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)