&sq=Google&lang=en&file=File:Old_Spanish_Trail.svg) Old Spanish Trail | |
|---|---|
| Southern Borderland Trunkline The Highway of the Southern Borderlands | |
&sq=Google&lang=en&file=File:OldSpanishTrailMap.jpg) | |
| Major junctions | |
| West end | San Diego, California |
| East end | St. Augustine, Florida |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| States | California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida |
| Highway system | |
The Old Spanish Trail (the OST) was an auto trail that once spanned the United States with almost 2,750 miles (4,430 km) of roadway from ocean to ocean. It crossed eight states and 67 counties along the southern border of the United States. Work on the auto highway began in 1915 at a meeting held at the Battle House Hotel in Mobile, Alabama; and, by the 1920s, the trail linked St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California, with its center and headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The work at San Antonio, and indeed nationally, was overseen by an executive committee consisting of prominent San Antonio businessmen which met at the Gunter Hotel weekly.[1]
Promoters of the Old Spanish Trail claimed that it followed the route used by "Spanish Conquistadors" 400 years earlier, but there was no continuous trail from Florida to California in Spanish times.[2]
- ^ Old Spanish Trail Executive Committee to Unknown Recipient, November 28, 1922, St. Mary's University Old Spanish Trail Archive
- ^ Laskow, Sarah (August 7, 2015). "Resurrecting the Original Road Trip on Americas' Ghost Highway". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved November 23, 2016.