Really, you clicked on this? 😜 But since you're obviously interested, here 'goes...

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About me

By day, I'm known as Brian Purcell. Although I have a bachelor's degree in Urban and Regional Planning, a fluke got me into the computer biz even before I even graduated from college, and I'm currently a systems architect at a university in San Antonio. Believe it or not, I'm not affiliated in any way with any road-building or transportation agency or contractor. All my life, though, I've had an interest in all forms of transportation, and this website is the manifestation of that hobby and interest that continues to this day.

If you're really bored, you can also read more about me on the bio page of a local transportation blog for which I was a contributor along with a former San Antonio Express-News reporter and the manager of the Texas Transportation Museum.

The San Antonio Express-News did a front-page feature story on me back in 2015 (must have been a slow news day), which was also picked-up by its sister paper, the Houston Chronicle. I also was asked to write a piece on San Antonio's freeway history for the Express-News's San Antonio Tricentennial series; it's published on their site here.

Additionally, I've been interviewed on several local newscasts, and have participated in a couple of transportation-related discussion panels for both the San Antonio NPR station and for the San Antonio Report.

In February 2020, TxDOT bestowed on me their "Road Hand" award in appreciation for this website, my work digitizing the San Antonio TxDOT district's historical photos, and other contributions over the years. Here is the description of the award from TxDOT:

Typically, this award is given to local politicians and community leaders who help champion projects or otherwise have supported TxDOT's efforts in their communities, so as someone who is neither in the road construction business nor politics, it was quite a surprise and honor to receive this recognition.

In addition to highways, I also have an interest in other forms of transportation, most notably trains and urban public transportation, which developed from my time living in Germany. To that end, I have a companion website about transportation in Germany.

Besides my intense interest in roads and transportation, it seems that I also have a real knack for directions and getting around; in fact, I'm one of those weirdos who rarely uses a navigation app.

At some point in our childhood, my little sister picked-up on my obsession with highways, and sometime in the mid '90s, she drew a really cute cartoon in which a super hero named "Highway Man" (which ostensibly was me) saves the day (see below). Around that time, I was just starting to browse the internet and needed a handle for my online persona. "Highway Man" had a nice ring to it, but I decided to add "Texas" to the moniker since I knew there were fellow "highwaymen" in other places, and I later christened my website with that name as well.

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Over the years, I've come across a few other cases of people using the name "TexasHighwayMan" on the Internet. For example, I found a couple of sites where someone using that name expresses some rather strong opinions on guns and abortion (funny how those topics tend to elicit strong opinions). That is not me. In general, I sign most of my online posts as either "TexHwyMan" and/or with my actual name, and I generally try to stay out of the fray on politics and controversial topics that are not transportation-related. In any case, if you find something posted online by "TexasHighwayMan" or the like and you want to know if it's me, feel free to ask. If it's something I posted, I'm certainly willing to discuss it with you. But I don't want to take credit (or condemnation) for things I did not post.

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About this site

Back in the mid '90s, while exploring the vast new world of the internet, I discovered the Usenet group misc.transport.road where "roadgeeks" such as myself from around the world nerded-out discussing all things related to roads. I soon discovered that many of the participants had created websites about roads in their particular state or city. Finding none for San Antonio or Texas at the time, what's now TexasHighwayMan.com was founded as "The Texas Highway Man Pages" section of "Brian's Place" in March 1998. That seminal site consisted of many of the foundational pages that still make up this site today including the pages about the San Antonio freeway system, the primer on Texas Highways, and "Laws and Good Driving Habits that Texas Drivers Forget (or just don't know)".

Over time, in addition to keeping the existing pages updated, I added new pages on a variety of topics related to roads in general as well as to San Antonio specifically. One of the earliest significant additions to the site were photos galleries of San Antonio's freeways, including time-lapse construction progress photos taken from various vantage points of the I-10/Loop 410 and US 281/Loop 410 interchange projects. One addition that was pretty impressive for the time was aerial photos of interchanges from TerraServer.com, one of the first sites on the internet to offer aerial photos. The arrival of Google Street View and satellite images in Google Maps (and other mapping services) provided constantly updated images of San Antonio’s roads from virtually any location and angle, therefore rendering my photo galleries obsolete, and so I finally retired them during a major site update in 2024.

One of the most significant additions to my site has been the San Antonio roads history section. Although a brief history of the freeway system has been included on the site since its early days, that section got a big boost in 2018 when the San Antonio TxDOT office allowed me to digitize their photo archive in exchange for permission to post the photos on my website. That sparked an interest in digging deeper into the history of San Antonio's roads beyond just the freeway system that has resulted in several pages documenting a fairly comprehensive history of local roads.

Over the years, the site has gone through several format updates, with the current version being rolled-out in early 2024.

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I'm happy to provide the information on this site free-of-charge. However, if you've found the information here particularly helpful and would like to make a small donation to help defray the costs of operating this site, you can click the "Buy Me a Coffee" button at the bottom of this page.

Thank you!