Other San
Antonio Area Roads
History
of Local Military Roads (And "Which Military?") |
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page last updated December 29, 2021 |
Military
convoy between San Antonio and Camp Bullis ca. 1935
This is on today's I-10 at
UTSA Blvd. looking north
(Source:
TxDOT)
Military Roads History
No compendium of road history in San Antonio would be
complete without a discussion the military. Given the armed forces' key
role in the area's economy as well as strategic considerations,
military mobility has played an integral part in the area's road
development, going all the way back the Spanish Colonial era.
Military Drive
The first instance of this in modern history came in
the 1930s when the need for a more direct route from Kelly
Field to
Brooks
Field emerged. To satisfy that, the county built the Military
Road (later Military Drive) to connect the two. This was
essentially the
first section of a loop proposed in the 1932 Arneson
Plan
for
state highways in Bexar County, albeit a bit further north than that
plan had envisioned. Arneson's plan noted the need
to
separate military and civilian traffic, and he warned that special care
would be needed in planning a loop to connect the military bases
without disrupting them.
First bits of a loop
In 1937, the state acquired and began improving Military Road--
including an overpass over Quintana Rd. and the adjacent railroad--
and designated it as the first segment of Loop 13. Around 1943,
Loop 13
was extended
west from Pearsall Rd.
through
the new San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center (later renamed Lackland AFB)
to US 90, and east from Brooks Field to WW White
Rd. Around 1946, Loop 13 was extended north along WW White to US 90
East. WW White continued north of there as a county road along today's
Springfield Road to the Seguin Road (today's FM 78), which
connected the
eastern end of
Fort Sam Houston
to Randolph
Field, thus providing more-or-less direct connectivity between the five
installations. Seguin Road was sometimes called "Randolph Field Road"
because of its connection to that installation.
Proposed
overpass at Randolph main entrance ca. 1955
(Source:
TxDOT)
Access to Randolph
Before
the mid '30s, Seguin Road was SH 3, the main highway between San
Antonio and Houston, and therefore provided a direct major state
highway connection right at Randolph's main gate. However, in the mid '30s, the
state built a new route for SH 3 several miles to the south of Randolph
(this route is today's I-10.) Although the Arneson Plan had proposed a
new, straighter route from Randolph to the new SH 3, it seems the state
nixed that idea at some point in favor of a new route to connect the
installation with nearby
US 81/SH 2 (today's I-35.) Built in 1935, that route is today's SH
218/Pat Booker Rd., and along with US 81 provided a new high-speed link
to Fort Sam Houston. It was
named for Francis Pascal "Pat" Booker, an Army Air Corps captain who
died in a crash in September 1936. In the 1950s, the state studied an
overpass for Pat Booker Rd. over FM 78 and the adjacent railroad and
into Randolph, but it never came to fruition. (Special
thanks to Michael P. Hoffman for some of the history of Pat Booker
Road.)
Harry Wurzbach
The
United States' entry into WWII created a new urgency for improving
roads serving the local military installations. To that end, the "Harry
Wurzbach
Military Highway" (sometimes referred to simply as "Military Highway")
was built by the county, state, and Works Progress Administration
around 1943 to directly connect Fort Sam Houston to
Camp Bullis, which was known as Leon Springs Military
Reservation at the time. Its purpose was
to replace a circuitous route through the city from
Fort
Sam to Camp Bullis via US 87/Fredericksburg Rd. The
new
road encompassed what's now Harry Wurzbach Rd., NW Military Hwy., and
the
stretch of today's Loop 410 in between, part of which at the time was a
road
named Zercher Rd. This linkage is why Harry Wurzbach and NW Military
bend toward each other at Loop 410. The route
included overpasses
where it intersected US 81 (Austin Hwy.) and US 281 (San Pedro Ave.) to
safely separate the military and civilian traffic streams.
Map
showing status of Harry Wurzbach Military Highway construction in 1943
Also note the early proposal for
Loop 410 (referred to as "Military Loop" in the notes) west of
NW Military-- it would have connected to US 87
(Fredericksburg Road) just north of Wurzbach Rd.
(Source:
Texas State Library and Archives)
"War Highways"
Also around 1943, today's Camp Bullis Rd. between I-10 and
Camp Bullis was built by the county in cooperation with the
Highway Department to replace the existing narrow and winding road
connecting the installation to US 87.
The road was designated "War Highway 2", one of 21 such routes around
the state built to support the war effort. Those designations were
dropped six months after the war ended.
Loop 13 grows
Around
1950, a new segment of Loop 13 was established along today's Loop 410
from Austin Hwy. westward to San Pedro Ave. (then US 281), subsuming
part of the
Harry Wurzbach Military Hwy. Around 1953, Loop
13 on the East Side was extended north from US
90 by straightening WW
White Rd. and constructing an overpass over FM 78 and the railroad
tracks, then continuing further north along
today's Loop 410
and
I-35 to
meet US 81 (today's Randolph Blvd.) near the community of
Fratt. This connected it with the
section of Loop 13 headed west. During the war, there had been a
short-lived
proposal for this northeastern section of the loop to head more
northwesterly from its crossing at FM 78 to cross Rittiman Rd. at
Salado
Creek, then follow Salado Creek to Austin Hwy., and then veer northwest
to meet Harry Wurzbach near today's Loop 410. It was thought this
would better facilitate military traffic, but it was
ultimately
nixed
since the state had already invested substantially in the route north
to Fratt and because the increase in access it would provide for the
military was
determined to be marginal.
Map of the various military roads
in San Antonio around 1945 overlaid
on today's freeway network
Military Drive West
While
it seems like it
may have been a logical extension of Loop 13 northward, Military
Drive north of US 90
was actually not part of any plans for the loop. Instead, the original
plan was to use Callaghan Rd. and continue south to US 90. Those
plans changed when it was
determined that Military Dr./Loop 13 on the South Side had become too
urbanized for
easy expansion, so a new route for what would become Loop 410 on the
South Side was
plotted further south along Chavaneaux Rd. and west of Lackland along
Dwyer Rd., and then extended north and
northeast from there. The first section of Military Drive West north
of US 90 was
built in 1961 to instead mainly serve new residential areas sprouting
up
north of
Lackland. Over the years, it has been extended further north and west
with an overpass for it at Loop 410 built in 1982. Coincidentally, it
now runs past the San Antonio campus of the National Security Agency,
providing yet another military context for the road. County officials
did ask the Texas Transportation Commission in 1968 to extend Loop 13
from US 90 to Potranco Rd., but the request was apparently denied.
Medina Base Road
Just
like with Fort Sam and Camp Bullis, a need arose to connect Kelly Field
and Medina Base, probably to provide a direct route to
transfer
atomic weapons stored at Medina to and from the airfield at Kelly. So
in the mid '50s, the Medina Base Road was built. However, instead of
intersecting Old Pearsall Rd. as it does today, it originally turned
northeastward just west of Old Pearsall Rd., crossed Military
Dr. and Leon Creek, and intersected with Westover
Rd. on the west side of the airfield. While that section of the road is
long gone now, the bridge at Leon Creek is still
there today. The rest of the route to the west was essentially the same
as it is today. When Loop 410 in that area was built around 1960, it
didn't include an interchange with Medina Base Road, perhaps to limit
traffic on the road in order to avoid conflicts with the military
traffic, much like the intersection of Harry Wurzbach and Austin Hwy.
An interchange was subsequently built in the late '60s after
the weapons center at Medina was transferred to another facility near
Amarillo.
Just passing through
Local
military
installations have also played a role in other local road history. The
first
state highway to the
northeast (SH 2 to
New Braunfels, Austin, and beyond) crossed through Ft. Sam Houston,
which was an open post until 2001. Heading
north along N New Braunfels Ave., it passed through Ft.
Sam, then turned east onto Eleanor St. and followed Old
Austin Rd. along the edge of the post, then crossed through Ft. Sam
again near the old BAMC and
onto the subsequent Harry Wurzbach before continuing northeast onto
Corinne Dr., Austin Hwy., and Randolph Blvd. SH 2 continued to pass
through Fort Sam until the late '20s when the
route was changed to use Broadway and Garraty Rd. instead. It's unclear
if that change was made to avoid traversing the post or if it was to
reduce the complexity of the downtown end of the route; perhaps it was
a bit of both.
Before
the current runway was built at Kelly Field during World War
II,
Frio City Rd.
connected to today's Old Pearsall Rd. at SW Military Dr. (looking at a
map,
you can see how they line up) and was also part of SH 2, which to the
south was the route
from San Antonio to
(you guessed it) Pearsall and on to Laredo. Part of that road is now
the section of General Hudnell Dr.
in Port San Antonio. When Kelly Field was first established at the
height of World War I in
1917, it occupied
the wedge of land
between that road and the railroad tracks along
Quintana. A second military field, unimaginatively called Kelly Field
#2, was built almost immediately
thereafter in the area immediately northwest of the original site with
SH 2 dividing the two. New Laredo Highway was then
built in the late '30s per the Arenson Plan to replace the route
through Kelly. During WW
II, the two airfields, then known as Kelly Field and Duncan
Field,
were combined and expanded and the remaining road through the
consolidated
Kelly Field was truncated in order to build new runways and hangars.
Duncan
(left) and Kelly (right) Fields 1935
This view is looking to the
southwest; Leon Creek is at the top.
The road in the middle of the two air fields is the old SH 2.
(Source:
United States Air Force via Wikipedia)
Which Military?
San
Antonio is known for having an unusual number of street naming
idiosyncrasies that confound locals and visitors alike. One of those is
that there are three distinct roadways
with "Military" in their name: SE/SW Military Drive, Military
Drive West, and NW
Military Highway. Here is the breakdown of each:
- SE/SW Military Drive:
This roadway, also designated as Loop 13, is the main "drag" of the
South Side of San Antonio running from S WW White Road near Loop 410
westward crossing both I-37 and I-35. It becomes Military Drive West
(see next bullet) somewhere near Whitewood St. just west of Pearsall
Rd. S Flores St. is the dividing line between SW and SE Military Dr.
- Military Drive West:
Military Drive West, also sometimes called W Military Dr., continues
north from the end of SW Military. If you're not paying attention to
the signs, you won't even notice the name change. It runs through the
middle of Lackland AFB before crossing
US 90 (where the Loop 13 designation ends), SH 151, and Loop 410. For
over three decades, it ended at Potranco Rd. In the mid '80s, another leg of
Military Drive
West sprung up between SH 151 and Grossenbacher Rd, gradually creeping eastward and southeastward toward Potranco.
The gap was finally closed in 2020.
- NW Military Highway:
This is a completely separate roadway that runs from Loop 410 through
Castle Hills to Camp
Bullis. Although it has the word
"Highway" in its name, it's actually just a regular arterial roadway and is also designated FM
1535.
Coincidentally,
Harry
Wurzbach Rd. is another example of the
local
phenomenon of multiple roads with similar names: the three roads
named Wurzbach. For more
information on that and on the
history
of the Harry Wurzbach name,
see the Which Wurzbach?
page.
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