Ozark Trail (auto trail)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ozark Trail" auto trail – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Ozark Trail
A map showing routes adopted (red) and others promoted (white) by the Ozark Trails Association
Route information
Existed	1913–1925
Major junctions
Northeast end	St. Louis, Missouri
Southwest end	El Paso, Texas Santa Fe, New Mexico
Location
Country	United States
States	Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico
Highway system
Auto trails

The Ozark Trail was a network of locally maintained roads and highways organized by the Ozark Trails Association that predated the United States federal highway system. The roads ran from St. Louis, Missouri, to El Paso, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a series of routes.^[1] These roads were maintained by both private citizens and local communities. In one case, however, the U.S. government was directly involved; it built the Newcastle Bridge in 1923 over the South Canadian River between Newcastle, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, as the first federal highway project built in Oklahoma.^[2]

These roads comprised the major highway system in the region until U.S. Highway 66 was built in the 1920s. In Oklahoma, portions of the section-line roads between Anadarko and Hobart are still referred to as "The Old Ozark Trail."