Prior to the construction of the Interstate Highway System, US and state highways provided for intercity and interstate travel. (For those of you younger than 40, yes, there was a time before Interstates!) These highways took various routes through the area over the years. Before construction of the city's expressways, and then the Interstate Highway System, those routes ran through the city on city streets.

By the late 1930s, the routes through the downtown area had become increasingly congested. So starting in the late '40s, the city and state began constructing expressways for through traffic in order to keep it out of downtown. These early expressways were then incorporated into the Interstate Highway system as it was built starting in the late '50s, and most of the US and state highways were then routed onto the expressways and off of city streets. (A history of the city's freeway system is here.)

Below is the best history that I can assemble of those early US and state highway routes through San Antonio, Bexar County, and the surrounding area at selected years between the formation of the state highway system and the start of construction of the Interstate Highway System. The years selected are those that I was able to find good information for and that represent significant changes in the system. In some cases, there were some intermediate route changes that were significant enough to mention; these are noted as a footnote.

The information on this page was generally compiled from an assortment of old maps from a variety of sources as well as old TxDOT right-of-way maps. Each year below includes a detailed turn-by-turn description of each route from downtown outbound and use today's road names for ease of reference. I've also plotted the routes on Google Maps to make visualizing them easier.

As I mentioned above, this is the best history I can glean from the resources I have found, and I have tried to cross-reference and correlate data as much as possible, but there may still be some minor inaccuracies. So if you have any corrections or additional information, please contact me!

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General history

While a few states were starting to build statewide road systems at the turn of the 20th Century, there was as yet no organized road system in Texas. Instead, counties were responsible for building roads, with the only direction from the state being to connect county seats with "first-class" roads. The result was that connections between towns were generally rough and often cobbled together using old stagecoach or wagon routes, cattle trails, ranch roads, or historical roads such as the Camino Real. Roads during this time were often just flattened earth where trees, brushes, stumps, and large rocks had been removed. There were few bridges — most rivers and creeks were either forded or crossed using ferries. Roads that were considered "improved" at this time typically had a gravel or macadam surface.

In Bexar County and many other places, roads leading out of town were often named based on where they went. Local examples include Austin Hwy./Old Austin Rd./Austin St., Nacogodoches Rd., Bulverde Rd., Blanco Rd., Fredericksburg Rd., Bandera Rd., Castroville Rd., Old Pearsall Rd., Laredo St./New Laredo Hwy., Somerset Rd., Pleasanton Rd., Goliad Rd., Old Corpus Christi Hwy., Houston St., and Seguin Ave./Old Seguin Rd. The "Old" prefix was added to segments of roads that were bypassed or otherwise cut off from the main route at some point; for example, the various sections of today's Old Austin Rd. were originally part of the Austin Road. In some cases, the opposite was done: the prefix "New" was included in the name for the replacement road, such as New Laredo Highway. And for a while after it was initially built, it appears the section of Austin Highway from Alamo Heights to Salado Creek was referred to as New Austin Rd.

A few years into the new century, various groups, such as auto clubs, "good roads" groups, touring organizations, and chambers of commerce began to develop and mark numerous interstate "auto trails" throughout the country. This was typically done by identifying the best existing roads between towns, and marking them using unique colored bands or other markings on telephone poles or signposts. In some cases, improvements were also made to the routes. Several of these auto trails traversed the San Antonio area including the King of Trails, the Glacier to Gulf Highway, the Meridian Highway, and, perhaps most notably, the Old Spanish Trail (OST), which was headquartered in San Antonio. The section of OST between San Antonio and Boerne was known as the "Headquarters Section" and was used to test various enhancements such as beautification and architectural features as well as road and safety improvements that could become a model for other localities to emulate.

Around 1915, the US Post Office appropriated money to improve the road between San Antonio and Austin in order to speed mail delivery. The resulting 16-foot wide, macadam "post road" was considered the finest road in the state for several years. You can still find segments of this route named "Post Road" in New Braunfels and San Marcos, and some old San Antonio maps label the road to Austin as "Austin Post Road".

Several attempts to create a state highway department in the first decade of the 1900s failed as counties did not want to give up local control. But the passage of the Federal Road Aid Act in 1916, which made federal funding available for roadbuilding, required states to establish a highway department and develop a designated highway system in order to receive those federal road funds. This finally gave the state the political will to establish a highway department in 1917. A few months later, the first numbered state highway system was created. Three of those seminal highways passed through San Antonio:

• State Highway 2, heading north to Fort Worth and south to Laredo (this would subsequently become US 81 and eventually I‑35).
• State Highway 3, running west to Del Rio and east to Houston (this would eventually become US 90).
• State Highway 9, heading northwest to San Angelo (subsequently becoming US 87) and southeast to Corpus Christi (subsequently becoming US 181).

In those first years, the state highways mostly just followed established county roads along the designated corridors. But with federal and state funds now available, and road building technology improving, the state quickly started improving those roads and, in many cases, built completely new routes to replace the older ones, especially ones that had winding, narrow, or unsafe paths between or through towns. These improvements resulted in the routings and numbering for many of the highways to change several times in a relatively short period.

By the early 1920s, two new state highways made their appearance on local maps:

• State Highway 27, heading northwest to Bandera, then north to Centerpoint and west through Kerrville and Junction to Sonora. By the mid '20s, this would be renumbered State Highway 81 and routed from Bandera through Medina to Kerrville and north to Fredericksburg, Llano, and beyond, eventually becoming State Highway 16. SH 27 was rerouted along SH 9 from San Antonio to Comfort, then west from there to Kerrville.
• State Highway 41, running northwest with SH 9 to the Waring-Comfort area, then heading west to Kerrville, Ingram, Mountain Home and Rocksprings. By 1933, the stretch between Comfort and Ingram would be renumbered as part of SH 27 instead.

State Highway 108, heading north to Blanco and beyond, was created around 1925. It was redesignated as State Highway 66 in 1931 and also extended south to Edinburg; this route eventually became US 281.

Other states were also expanding their highway systems at this time. However, each state numbered and marked their highways differently. This, along with the frequent changes and the assortment of named trails that often overlapped the state routes, resulted in a messy and disorganized system for travelers. In 1925, in an effort to create a standard and consistent national highway numbering system, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO) created the United States Numbered Highway System, or "US Highways" for short. Contrary to common perception, US Highways are not a network of national roads built by the federal government. Instead, they are a system of identifying state highways that are deemed important interstate and interregional routes and designating them with coordinated and consistent route numbers and markers so as to make it easier for long-distance travelers to find their way. Texas began designating their US Highway routes in 1927.

In the first version of the US Highway System, the route running northwest from San Antonio was numbered as US 290. It ran to Comfort, Kerrville, and on to Ft. Stockton; most of this route west of Mountain Home eventually became I‑10. In Comfort, another road, US 385, started and headed northeast and north along the Old San Antonio Road through Bankersmith to Fredericksburg, San Angelo, and beyond. By 1928, it appears the route for US 385 was rerouted away from Comfort and instead headed south through Waring and Welfare to meet US 290 at Nelson City, likely to facilitate a more direct route to San Antonio. Although the official southern terminus for US 385 was listed as being at its junction with US 290, it appears that by 1932, US 385 was co-signed with US 290 into San Antonio.

Then, in a 1935 revision of the system, US 87 was extended south from Wyoming into Texas and supplanted US 385. Contemporaneously, US 290 was rerouted east from north of Mountain Home through Fredericksburg, Austin, and on to Houston, leaving the segment from Comfort through Kerrville and Mountain Home as SH 27. Finally, a new road for US 87 from Fredericksburg to Comfort was completed by 1935, and the "Old Number 9" route through Bankersmith was removed from the state highway system.

During the first years of the US Highway System, the existing state highway numbers were used alongside the new US route number. This was likely done so that travelers with older maps, and those already familiar with the existing state routes, could still easily find their way. The redundant state highway numbers were officially phased-out in a major renumbering of the state's highway system in 1939. Locally, this renumbering included changing SH 81 to SH 16; this was probably to avoid confusion with the new US 81 as both ran through San Antonio.

The chart below summarizes the changes to the different highways in San Antonio during those first couple of decades. It also shows the two forms of the state highway shield used in those early days. I'm sure all the changes caused quite a bit of confusion!

In 1930, the state authorized a study of existing highways in Bexar County and proposals to improve them. This study, by local engineer Edwin P. Arneson (for whom the Arneson River Theater is named), was completed in 1932. It recommended rerouting nearly all routes coming into San Antonio, and widening and straightening sections that were not to be relocated. It also recommended the replacement of numerous railroad crossings with overpasses or underpasses, as well as the elimination of all low-water bridges.

The Arneson Plan was also the first official recommendation for a loop system around the city, parts of which were eventually manifested as Loop 13 and Loop 410.

The entire plan was estimated to cost $9.4 million, or about $186 million in today's dollars. While only a few of his recommendations were adopted exactly as he prescribed, most of his concepts were eventually implemented in some form or another, and the paths of several of today's highways can be traced back to his plan.

The City of San Antonio commissioned local engineer Walter Lilly to conduct a master plan and study for the city around 1950. His report, sometimes called the "Lilly Report", came at the cusp of the freeway-era and included a major street plan that made dozens of recommendations for new and extended arterials and connections, a downtown "inner loop", one-way streets, revised parking regulations, support for off-street parking, upgraded mass transit, and increased enforcement.

Especially noteworthy was his proposal for the completion of Loop 13, which at the time existed only south of US 90. His plan revised the earlier Arneson plan for routing the loop on the northeast side, which eventually came to fruition, and the northwest side, which did not. Lilly also recognized that Loop 13 on the South Side was quickly losing its usefulness as a bypass due to traffic and becoming hemmed-in by development, so he recommended a new southern bypass route that eventually became the path for Loop 410 from US 90 near Lackland AFB to I‑37.

Main Plaza was (and still is, to my knowledge) the official "zero milepost" for San Antonio and, in fact, there is a marker in the floor of San Fernando Cathedral marking the official center of the city. Thus, this was the logical destination for the first highways into San Antonio.

The zero milestone for the Old Spanish Trail was located a stone's throw away (pun unintended) in front of City Hall. That marker is still there today on the northeast corner of the City Hall lawn.

While both Commerce St. and Houston St. were initially used for routes through downtown, it appears that by the mid '30s, all of the east-west routes through downtown were trunked over Commerce St., which was two-way until about 1954.

The convergence of all these routes, along with the dramatic growth in automobile traffic by the late 1930s, caused severe congestion in the downtown area. To address this growing problem, officials began planning a series of "interregional highways" to carry through traffic around downtown. However, the outbreak of World War II delayed this initiative. After the war ended in 1945, the effort resumed, and the first expressways opened in the late '40s and early '50s to provide a high-speed bypass around downtown San Antonio. The routings of US and state highways through the city were changed several times to use the new expressway segments as they opened.

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1926

This map shows the earliest state highway routings in San Antonio I can verify. These routes generally followed the original county roads headed out of San Antonio to adjacent county seats. As a result, there are quite a few interesting paths for these routes and explains why some roads are named and/or laid-out the way they are to this day. For example, the following roads were named for the destinations of the routes that ran over them at this time: Castroville Rd., Bandera Rd./Old Bandera Rd., Fredericksburg Rd./Old Fredericksburg Rd., Austin Hwy./Old Austin Rd., Seguin St./Seguin Rd./Old Seguin Rd., Corpus Christi Hwy., Old Pearsall Rd., Bulverde Rd., and Pleasanton Rd. In addition, Goliad Rd., Houston St., Blanco Rd., and, perhaps most notably, Nacogdoches Rd. also represent previous routings of roads to those towns. New Braunfels Ave. may have also been so-named as it was part of routes to that town at various times.

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1936

By 1936, US Highway route numbers had been well-established. Per the 1932 Arneson Plan to improve local highways, most routes through San Antonio and Bexar County had been significantly changed to use new wider and straighter roads. SH 66 and US 281 replaced the former SH 108 north from the city.

Changes from 1926 are noted in red below.

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1940

The 1939 renumbering of state highways had now eliminated the state highway routes that were redundant with the new US routes. In the few years since 1936, some more significant changes in local routings had occurred. US 81 South was now using a completely new route, and US 181 had been straightened near Brooks. Additionally, the former SH 81 was changed to SH 16 (likely to prevent confusion with US 81), and SH 9 through the area had been dropped with the section of it on S Flores being rolled into SH 16.

In an effort to help relieve chronic congestion along Commerce St., US 81 was now routed south on S Alamo St. to Flores St.

In 1937, the state took over the existing Military Rd. (today's Military Dr.) between Kelly Field and Brooks Field and began upgrading it as the first segments of Loop 13, which at the time was only planned to run around the south and east sides of the city and end at the Austin Highway at Fratt.

Changes from 1936 are noted in red below.

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1950

There were only a few changes in the radial highways in the decade between 1940 and 1950, mainly straightening some of the remaining kinks in the older routes. A new route was added in 1946 when the road to Poteet and Jourdanton was designated as State Highway 346.

Loop 13 was extended northwest through the new Lackland AFB to US 90, and east to WW White Rd. and then north to US 90. The first section on the North Side was completed running from San Pedro Ave. to Austin Hwy., mostly usurping the existing Zercher Rd. and Harry Wuzbach Military Hwy.

The biggest change came in 1949 with the opening of the city's first expressway; it was a segment of US 87 that replaced the routing on Fredericksburg Rd. from Woodlawn into downtown. SH 16 was also adjusted to take advantage of the new expressway.

Changes from 1940 are noted in red below.

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1956

This was the last year before the construction of the Interstate Highway System began and therefore is the last year in this historical review.

Locally, this period saw the most changes in local highway routings in decades as two new sections of expressway north and south of downtown were completed. Although primarily designed to be a bypass for US 81, the two new expressway segments facilitated changes to all the other routes through the city so that they could now completely bypass the downtown core.

The other linchpin for this was the construction of Steves Ave. connecting Probandt St. to Roosevelt Ave. and S. Presa St. This new road allowed the three southeastern routes to be trunked and shunted westward south of downtown. There, they were routed onto the new expressway and the San Saba/Pecos one-way street pair along the west side of downtown.

Another significant change during this time was the routing of SH 16 North — it had now been changed to use a dramatically improved section of Culebra Ave. and Bandera Rd.

Finally, Loop 13 on the East Side had been extended northward to US 81 at Fratt, and plans were now in the works to extend it around the northwest side of the city.

Changes from 1950 are noted in red below.

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Postscript

By 1959, the elevated "Central Expressway" along the west side of downtown connecting the three previously completed sections of expressway north and south of downtown was complete and open to traffic. This allowed all the routes except US 90 that had previously been using the San Saba/Pecos one-way street pairs to now pass over the west end of downtown without stopping. At that time, this was a big deal!

As the Interstates were built and the city's expressway system was expanded, all of the US Highways through the city were routed over them with the exception of US 87 East. US 81 was routed along I‑35, US 87 North was routed on I‑10 West, US 90 East was routed over I‑10 East, and part of US 281 South was routed over I‑37 and Loop 410. US 181 was truncated at I‑37. and US 90 West and US 281 North were routed over their own new expressways. In several cases, parts of the old highway routes in the outlying areas were upgraded in-place to Interstates or expressways.

After the US Highways were moved to the Interstates and expressways, some of the roads were decommissioned as state highways and returned to the city for maintenance, but most of the old routes through the city were kept as state highways. These were renumbered as State Loops or Spurs. Three of them — Fredericksburg Rd., Austin Hwy./Broadway, and New Laredo Hwy./Nogalitos St. — were actually signed as Business US 87 and Business US 81 respectively until about 1991 even though they officially carried different state highway numbers. For unknown reasons, Old Highway 90, Commerce St., and San Pedro Ave. inside Loop 410 did not remain part of the state highway system. The table below summarizes the route changes after 1960.

Since it was completely co-existent with I‑35 (and therefore superfluous), US 81 south of Ft. Worth was decommissioned in 1991.

Starting in 2014, some sections of those old US highways were decommissioned by the state and returned to the City of San Antonio as part of TxDOT's "turnback" program to help reduce maintenance costs. Those sections are Broadway from I‑35 to Alamo Heights, Fredericksburg from I‑10 to Balcones Heights, and San Pedro from Loop 410 to US 281.

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Other sites of interest

	Texas Transportation Museum - The History of Roads and Bridges in San Antonio https://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/history-road
	TexasFreeway.com (by Ron Jackson) http://www.texasfreeway.com
	Dallas-Ft. Worth Freeways (has lots of old highway maps, many of which I referenced for this page) http://www.dfwfreeways.com