Highway 83 In Texas Book Now Available

U.S. Route 83 is like no other highway in Texas. It extends from its northernmost border at Oklahoma, passes through the ranchlands and oil patches of the Panhandle, hits a big speed bump in Hill Country, then follows the Rio Grande Valley all the way to Brownsville.

Award-winning author Stew Magnuson set out in 2009 to chronicle the past and present along this historically rich highway, traveling its length in May 2010 with the idea to publish a book about what he discovered. Like Highway 83 itself, it was a long road that took nearly eight years, but it ended on March 27 with the publication of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 in Texas.

Magnuson calls The Last American Highway in Texas a hybrid history-travel book.

“Every town has a story to tell,” he says.

A massacre in Menard marked the beginning of the end for the Spanish Empire in America. Wellington is where the notorious criminals Bonnie and Clyde sent their car careening into the Red River. On a ranch just east of Brownsville, Ranger “Rip” Ford led the charge at the final battle of the Civil War.

Magnuson uncovers the stories of the famous, the infamous and the forgotten as he explores a road like no other in America.

The Last American Highway in Texas is available on Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along the highway.

Over the past eight years, Magnuson has carved out a place as the foremost expert on the fifth longest federal highway that runs 1,885 miles from the Canadian border to Mexico. He founded and administers the Fans of U.S. Route 83 page on Facebook, which now has more than 3,300 members. His usroute83.com website serves as a place for travel tips for those who want to explore the road. He writes the Highway 83 Chronicles blog about current events.

He successfully published two previous books about the road, The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83:The Dakotas and; The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma. He has appeared on South Dakota Public Television and Nebraska Public Television, and done dozens of book talks and radio spots extolling the pleasures of traveling what was once called the Great Plains Highway.

Magnuson is also the author of The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns. Published by Texas Tech University Press, it was named the 2009 Nebraska Nonfiction book of the year, a finalist for the Center of Great Plains Studies book of the year, and was recently named one of the Nebraska’s 150 most important literary works to mark the state’s sesquicentennial this year. He also penned Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding, a brief account of the Wounded Knee occupation.  
The Last American Highway in Texas is also sold at: Prairie Pages, Pierre, SD; PLains Trading Co., Valentine, NE;  Kimber's Convenience Store, Stapleton, NE; A to Z Books, North Platte, NE; Buffalo Bill Cultural Center, Oakley, KS; Keystone Gallery, Scott City, KS; El Quartelejo Museum, Scott City, KS; Finney County Historical Museum, Garden City, KS; Museum of the Plains, Perryton, Texas; Gageby Country Store, Canadian, Texas; Texas Star Trading, Abilene, Texas and Frontier Texas! in Abilene.

For signed copies or retail opportunities, Email Stew Magnuson HERE.

The Hunter: An Excerpt from The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 in Texas

This excerpt takes place in May 2010 in the Rio Grande Valley.  

The Hunter

By Stew Magnuson

On my way out of Zapata the next day, I set out to find the ruins of a gas station that was once on Highway 83 before the Falcon Dam inundated the valley.

A souvenir store owner had tipped me off about the building, which he said was near on old fishing camp about five miles west of 83. He gave me detailed directions on how to find it, so after driving a few miles I left the comfort of the paved highway and took off on a gravel road, getting lost for a bit, but eventually righting myself until I come across the fishing camp.

I can’t find anything resembling an old gas station so I start to drive through the ramshackle collection of aging campers and mobile homes shaded by gnarly old trees. It’s not long before an old man in a red pickup truck intercepts me near a boat ramp. He rolls down the window.

“What ya looking for?” he asks. He looks a little miffed, and I realize that maybe I shouldn’t be here.

I tell him my story and he listens carefully as we both get out of our vehicles. He sizes me up and decides that I’m not a threat. They have been having all sorts of problems with drug smugglers and for all he knew, I could have been someone here to meet a boat full of dope coming over the lake, he explains. They have been known to fly helicopters over the border to see if the coast is clear.

“People round here sleep with their guns loaded by their beds,” he says.

His name in Jack Cox Jr., and his father once owned the fishing camp, which has been here for some fifty years. The old gas station is just a few yards past the camp entrance and over a fence. It’s marked “No Trespassing,” but it shouldn’t be a problem if I just want to hop over and snap a few pictures, he tells me.

Since I introduced myself as an author, he wants to know what I’ve written. It just so happens I have copies of my first book in the trunk, and he wants to buy one.

“There ain’t much to do out here except read,” he says.

Jack Cox Jr., May 2010

There are only three full-time residents in the camp, and he’s one of them. He sold the property four years ago, but part of the deal with the new owner was that he could stay there for five years rent free.

He invites me back to his house for a cup of coffee.

Out front of the white mobile home, I’m greeted by a shaggy white dog and a friendly cat, who has just brought Jack a dead bird as a present.

Inside, the mobile home is not what I expected. It is decorated with African art: masks, textiles, carvings.

“I managed a hunting camp in Somalia on the Jubba River for five years,” he declares.

“You did what, now?”

I’m glad I grabbed my notebook.

Jack takes a seat in a chair, while I sit on his sofa and fumble for a pen. He’s eighty-one years old, he tells me. Fox News is on mute. I would expect an elderly widower’s mobile home to be a mess. The room is cluttered, but clean. His coffee table is covered in magazines: The Weekly Standard, National Geographic, Smithsonian. He tries to peg me as a liberal, Washington, D.C.-based journalist. I tell him I’m a radical centrist. That seems to confuse him.

“It means I’m in the middle and I get to argue with everybody.”

Fortunately, the conversation turns away from politics and to his days as a big game guide.

“I was an elephant hunter and a safari guide,” he continues, first giving me a quick version of his life story.

He grew up in Midland, Texas, where he was a friend of Larry L. King, who would go on to be a journalist, author and the co-writer of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Like many in that area, Jack joined the oil business and worked for Rogers Exploration as a “seismic man.” The company sent him to Australia, Tanzania, Brazil and Bolivia for years-long stints.

He married twice, both times to Australian women. His second wife died fifteen years ago. He is still in contact with his first. Back when he was a young man in Midland, he was in love with a high school classmate. But a fighter pilot from the nearby Air Force base stole her away. A lifetime later, the Air Force officer passed away, and Jack and his long-lost love are at last together. She lives in Sweetwater, Texas, and he travels there quite a bit to see her. She hates the fishing camp.

“I got her in the end,” he says with a smile.

He doesn’t mention any children, and I forget to ask. Some kind of journalist, I am.

He was in Tanzania working for the oil company when the opportunity to run the hunting camp in Somalia presented itself.

He pushes himself up from the chair, walks to another room and returns with an album.

Inside, is an envelope, and inside the envelope is a brochure for the camp. It’s fifty years old, but it looks like it was printed yesterday. He was there from the late 1950s to the early 1960s—back when well-heeled men could live out their Hemingway safari fantasies—for a price.

He shows me black and white pictures of the kills.

“My first lion,” is written in pen on the edges of one. Jack and some other fellow is squatting next to a lioness, holding her mouth open, smiling. Jack is young, his black hair slicked back, a broad, handsome face. It’s startling to see him as a young man.

“Those were good times,” he said, showing me another picture of two guests he identifies as members of the Kennedy administration.

“And the women …” he trails off. Smiles. I can see that he’s remembering one of them, maybe more. I don’t dare interrupt his reverie.

“I closed up many bars in Nairobi,” he continues as I look at a series of pictures of dead elephants, gazelles and such. That was back when the Italians ran Somalia. Once the colonialists left, the “whole country went to shit,” he says. That was the end of the hunting lodge on the Jubba River. He went back to being a seismic man for the oil companies, although he did spend a couple years trying to grow cotton in Australia.

“Money never was the thing, you see. But I wish I had saved just a little bit more of it.”

He’s heading up to Sweetwater that day to see his “lady friend,” as he calls her, so it’s time for me to go. He really wants me to see the old gas station before I leave. So we head back outside where he lets me take a few pictures of him as the cat curls around his leg.

“It’s been a good life. I’m not a religious man, but I wonder what the adventure is on the other side.”

*    *   *

US PROPERTY

NO

TRESPASSING

WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING FEDERAL PROPERTY. DO NOT ENTER. NO WEAPONS ALLOWED. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. I.B.W.C.

Well, Jack said it’s no problem. So I climb over the fence where the signs are hung and walk a few feet back among to find what remains of old Highway 83 and a gas station.

The filling station is a yellowish-pinkish shell. It looks as if the waters have come up several times to wash away everything but its walls. The roof is gone, but a beam that once held it up to keep the sun and rain off motorists filling up at the pumps still stands. Someone else has ignored the sign and taken potshots at the beam, leaving a half-dozen bullet holes in the concrete. Mesquite and prickly pear are growing around it.

The old road itself is gravel and disappears into the vegetation. I poke around for any relics from the old days—an old bottle, a sign—there’s nothing but pieces of corrugated steel. A cluster of cactus bulbs has somehow taken hold on top of the wall. I wonder how it can do that.

I imagine the gas station in its heyday. If it ever had one. It was unattached to a town—a good ten miles away from any of the now submerged villages. I see the cars pulling up for gas and water on hot days, parents yanking Coke bottles out of the pop machine for their kids, the attendant wiping the dust and bug juice off the windshields.

Included in the $47 million the federal government spent to construct the Falcon Dam was $3.5 million allocated to improve fifty-five miles of Highway 83, and to relocate several miles of it to the north. The Texas State Highway Department did the work. The unflooded sections of the road and bridges were widened from eighteen to twenty-four feet and graded to eliminate the “rollercoaster effect,” as one newspaper described it. Care was taken to construct the new sections far to the north beyond where the lake was expected to rise. Work was finished before the dam was dedicated in 1953. Slowly, the Rio Grande waters swallowed up the villages and the old highway. I wonder if they left any of those old federal shield signs standing. I can picture bass swimming around them now.

One of the first dry spells after the dam was built exposed the five abandoned villages and their buildings. The feds decided that the structures were hazardous and bulldozed them, leaving nothing but foundations. Yet the gas station sitting out here survived.   

Taking a picture of the highway as it emerges from the mesquite, I notice there are car tracks in the gravel. I doubt the ghosts of old U.S. Route 83 left them there, so I’m not going to push my luck with the Border Patrol, a drug smuggler, or whoever has been driving back here. I don’t linger.

Post-Script

This encounter with Jack Cox Jr. occurred in May 2010. A little more than a year later, my attempts to reach him failed. His phone was disconnected and a letter came back to me “Return to Sender. No Forwarding Address.” Attempts to track him down online have come up empty. If anyone knows the whereabouts or fate of Jack, please contact me. 

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 in Texas, available at the Gageby Country Store in Canadian, Texas, The Museum of the Plains in Perryton and Texas Star Trading in Abilene. He also penned The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. Both are available online or in museums, bookstores and gift shops on Hwy 83.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Two Roads Not Built: And That Has Made all the Difference for Highway 83

By STEW MAGNUSON

Available at bookstores and Amazon.com

 A couple of months ago, Sharleen Wurm, the director of The Last Indian Raid/Decatur County Museum in Oberlin, Kansas, came across a treasure.

Tucked away hidden in the museum’s storage was a scrapbook kept by a former member of the U.S. Canada Highway 83 Association. Who compiled it and when it was donated is unknown, but inside was a treasure trove of information about the association that spanned some 20 years from the early 1960s to early 1980s.

The organization began as the Great Plains Highway Association in 1926 and fizzled out sometime in the early 1990s. Because the highway continues as the number 83 for a few hundred miles into Manitoba, it was an international organization.

Once Sharleen alerted me to the scrapbook’s contents, she graciously made color photocopies of every page and mailed them to me. What a great gift for a road historian! Inside were the schedules of annual meetings, newspaper clippings, a document containing remembrances of the association written by past presidents, promotional items the association produced to promote travel on the road such as brochures, postcards and restaurant placemats. And even some poetry! Yes, poems written about Highway 83.

One of the most interesting documents to me was a six-page type written report by a retired grade school principal and ardent Highway 83 booster Ira Laidig of Oberlin, who took it upon himself to travel the length of Highway 83 from his hometown all the way to Brownsville, Texas, to drum up support for the association and Interstate 27.

Interstate 27? Where is that? 

In the 1960s, there were two roads not taken, or to be more precise, never built. Going through the newspaper clips and Laidig’s report, I learned of two roads that the association was heavily supporting a half century ago. One I am very glad never came to fruition. The other I wish had.

As the Interstate system was being built out in the 1960s, Congress authorized the construction of Interstate 27, which would have replaced U.S. Route 83 from Westhope down to Brownsville.

Highway 83 Association scrapbook found in Oberlin, KS.

So what happened? Congress authorized it, but the appropriations committee never funded it. Members of the association wrote letters and lobbied as best they could, but the money never materialized.

Meanwhile up north, Canadian members of the association were trying to convince their national government to extend Highway 83 past its terminus Swan River all the way to Hudson Bay. They too were unsuccessful.

So inside the box Sharleen mailed me was the tail of two roads not taken. Laidig as he traveled south on Highway 83 found various degrees of support for the association and the new interstate. Ray Hettic, a past association president from Liberal, Kansas, for example, was not enthusiastic about the idea.

Towns had to pay $100 to remain a member of the association. Some chambers of commerce were big supporters of the organization with many local businessmen and women attending annual meetings and promoting U.S. 83. Other towns were apathetic.

I am grateful the association was not successful and I-27 was never built. I hate soulless, mind-numbing Interstates and I have a hard time picturing what the

communities along present-day 83 would look like if they had been bypassed by a superhighway. I certainly would have never written The Last American Highway books, or this column.

But it’s too bad about the road to Hudson Bay. Wouldn’t that be an adventure to head north on 83 and drive until reaching Hudson Bay? There are other provincial roads beyond Swan River, but they don’t quite make it there.

One interesting thing to consider is that I-27 is most likely still on the books. I asked a colleague of mine at work who specializes in legislative affairs in Washington, D.C., if acts passed by appropriators and signed into law ever expire. They don’t unless a lawmaker wrote legislation in a subsequent act to rescind it. I’m not 100 percent sure, but it’s more than likely an Interstate replacing U.S. 83 still exists on paper. All it would require is some funding.
(The number 27 was eventually appropriated for another road near Lubbock, Texas.)
And when I say some, I actually mean a whole lot. Estimates on how much it costs to construct a four-lane Interstate in a rural area varies, but looking at different estimates, $8 million per mile is a good average. Highway 83 is about 1,885 miles long. Subtract the sections that are already Interstate such as the 83 Expressway in the Rio Grande Valley, the short stretches of I-94 in North Dakota, I-90 in South Dakota and bypasses in towns like Abilene and Laredo, that could be whittled down to 1,785 miles, or so.

That would come to about $142.8 billion to convert U.S. 83 to an Interstate.

For that, and many other reasons, I’m certain that “The Last American Highway” will remain “The Last American Highway” for quite some time. 

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Nazi Sympathizers in Scott City, Kansas? No. Just Lumps of Coal: The Stories That Old Pictures Tell Us

By STEW MAGNUSON

I had my eye on the picture of a giant black dust cloud descending on the town of Scott City, Kansas, for at least four years.

The picture dated 1935, photographer unknown, was in the Library of Congress collection. It could be seen online as a thumbnail, but it had not yet been digitized in a large enough size for publication. The library has millions of photos and only enough employees to digitize so many of them, so not everything is readily available to the public.

“That would be an awesome, probably never before published, historic photo for my Highway 83 book,” I thought.

And so I waited. Photos that have not been digitized are still available to be printed, but for a fee. As work on the manuscript dragged on, I had no motivation to order the picture in advance. Maybe it would be digitized at some point and then it would be free for me to take and publish, I reasoned.

Well, finally last summer as I began to gather up all the material for The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma, I decided to pay the $50 fee to have a technician at the library print an 8x10 black and white hard copy.

Scott City, Kansas, Photographer unknown. Library of Congress photo.

About a week later, the photo mailer arrived at my home. I eagerly opened it at the dining room table as my wife looked on curiously.

I pulled out the picture, and there it was:

“Holy cow,” I said. “There’s a Nazi swastika in this picture!”

As some townspeople stand and watch the monstrous cloud come rolling down the avenue, to the side there is a giant billboard with a swastika. I definitely had not noticed that on the tiny thumbnail image online.

What the flippin heck? Was my first thought. Were there Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s living in Scott City, Kansas? Before World War II broke out, Adolf Hitler did have some admirers in America.

But the short answer is: No.

This turned out to be a great example of the history one can uncover in old images.
And I probably should have known from the beginning that there were no Nazis in Scott City. As I young man I traveled extensively in Asia. The Buddhist swastika, which pre-dated Nazism by a thousands years, is a common sight on temples even today.

The swastika before the Nazis co-opted it was a symbol of good luck in Hinduism and Buddhism. The word originates in sanskrit as “lucky object.” It appears in other cultures as well, and the first appearance in the archeological record dates back to an etching on a 10,000 year old mammoth tusk.

Native American cultures used it as well, particularly the southwest tribes such as the Hopis. A swastika within an arrowhead even appeared on early Arizona highway signs.  By the late 1930s, the state of Arizona’s road department was hastily taking down these signs and scrapping them. The symbol of good luck, was tilted a bit, then in a short time became a symbol of hate and tyranny.

So what about the swastika on the Scott City billboard?

This was actually an advertisement for coal. The Swastika Fuel Company was located in a town named Swastika next to a coal mine in New Mexico, according to a website ghosttowns.com.

“Coals for all Uses, Domestic, Steam, Swastika coals do not clinker, most heat for your money,” said matchbook cover advertising the company I found online.

A movie theater slide — the pictures they showed on the screen before the film ran — is online at a proswastika.org website — advertising the J.E. Kirk Grain Co. of Scott City, Kans. — exclusive dealers.

“Why not Economize on your COAL BILL by using SWASTIKA?” it reads.

“Sign of good coal.”

J.E. Kirk Grain Company is on the side of the building.

As soon as the World War II broke out, and the swastika became stigmatized, the mining town changed its name to Brilliant. The company and the town no longer exist. And one would imagine the J.E. Kirk Grain Company employees tore down that billboard fairly quickly.

I published the picture in The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma on the pages about Scott City even though it no longer fit the story. I wrote about the Dirty Thirties in other chapters in the book, but I stuck it in there anyway. It was too interesting a photo to leave out.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition and The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. 

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  For signed copies, contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

May 10, 1926: A Newly Established Great Plains Highway Association Clamors for a North-to-South Road

Look for the new book Feb. 9!

By STEW MAGNUSON

“The peppiest bunch of good road enthusiasts ever assembled in southwestern Nebraska is now within our gates—and they will not be denied their goal—a state-federal highway from Canada to the Gulf, running more or less north-south through McCook,” said the evening edition of the McCook Gazette.

It was the May 10, 1926, when some 200 businessmen from South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas converged at the Keystone Hotel in McCook, Nebraska, to put together the Great Plains Highway Association.

The Good Roads Movement was in full swing and about to have its greatest success. Local and national associations for decades had come together to create auto trails that would connect their towns. It was an alliance between corporations who had a vested interest in promoting car travel—automobile, tire, cement manufacturers—and local businessmen who wanted the same. By 1923, Ford was cranking out more than 2 million Model Ts per year. Motorists were clamoring for better driving conditions.

Such associations had been popping up everywhere. The Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental road. The Bankhead was the second, but took a more southerly route.

Between cities and small towns, there was little in the way of actual roads, just ruts in the mud. Some of these associations made logos they put on signs to help guide motorists. Many of the trails converged and associations competed to draw motorists to their trails. 

By 1926, there were some 250 named trails in the United States. Many of them were aspirations—just lines on a map with no real backing or improved roads.

The Good Roads Movement’s ultimate goal was to cajole the federal government into doing more to build highways. And in that, it had already succeeded by 1926. The American Association of State Highway Officials, with the blessing of the federal government, had already released its draft proposal of numbered highways and their routes. The committee tasked with creating the new system had long decided to do away with named auto trails. The descriptive, colorful names—the Dixie Highway, the Blue Pole Highway, the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway—would not be official names.

The final list would be released in November, and it would mark the beginning of the state and federal partnership to standardize roads in America, the Good Roads Movement’s ultimate goal. The logos would soon be replaced by the federal shield sign still in use today.

That was undoubtedly known by most of those attending, but it didn’t damper their enthusiasm for a Great Plains, north-to-south highway. At that point, there were no highways going north to south between Kansas City and Denver. The closest was the Meridian Highway, which hugged the state lines to the east (present day U.S. 81). McCook good road promoters had succeeded two decades ago helping to develop the O.L.D (Omaha Lincoln Denver) trail across the bottom half of the state. By 1926, it had expanded to the D.L.D., the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver trail.

The businessmen came together in the afternoon to adopt a constitution and bylaws and to elect officers. The president would be Charles O. Woods of North Platte; vice president, A.B. Whitney of Murdo, South Dakota and the secretary-treasurer was V. Barbazette of McCook.

One by one the attendees stood up to add their support to the growing chorus of those who thought there needed to be a north-to-south road. When it came to highways, the country was still following in the footsteps of the Conestoga wagons on their east-to-west journeys. When the first draft of what would be the federal highway was released in 1925, there were no north-south roads in the middle of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. That could not have sat well with the citizens of Minot, Bismarck, Pierre, North Platte, McCook, Oberlin, Garden City and Liberal.

Connecting the prairielands to the ports in South Texas was one of the new association’s stated goals.

The guest of honor at the meeting was Nebraska State Engineer Roy Cochran. Nebraska had already put in place a taxation system that favored the sparsely populated part of the state. Some $1.5 million had already been spent improving the road between North Platte and McCook, he said. From North Platte to Valentine, the heart of the foreboding Sand Hills, there was almost nothing, he said. The state was bogged down in the sandy soil as the Blue Pole Highway— a Fremont to Chadron east-to-west road—stretched westwards. Only 25 miles had been completed in two years in Cherry County.  

“The construction difficulties and the expense is so great that the progress has been quite slow,” Cochran said. The fact remained, that most commerce was still moving east to west, he told the audience. Nevertheless, he endorsed the idea of a north-to-south road as long as funding was available.

Some of the largest contingents at the meeting had come from the Sand Hills—towns such as Stapleton, Gandy, Tryon, Thedford and Brownlee—to lend their voices. Forty of the delegates came from Stapleton alone. The Sandhillers were a gloomy, pessimistic bunch, according to their dire warnings about road building in the dunes. Years of trying to traverse them had no doubt left psychological scars.

John Turner of Thedford had been trying to develop an east-to-west  “Potash Highway” (present day State Highway 2) for years, but to no avail.

“If you take a trip through the Sand Hills you will be surprised at [the] roads because there are none,” he said. He warned about the terrible, shifting sands.

“For God’s sake, give us a road,” he said.

A Mr. Christensen of Valentine did his best to dispel his town’s Wild West reputation  as he encouraged delegates to visit his fine city.

“We don’t have so many saloons and not nearly so much gambling…We want you to come up there fishing I will show you that if you come up there fishing you will get some fish,” he said.

“When I came down here today I was tired and a little bit discouraged until I saw all these men and I am very much enthused about this road and I am going back to Valentine very glad I came down.”

A Valentine to North Platte road tentatively called the Kinkaid Highway had been proposed a decade earlier, but nothing came of that effort, either.

The Keystone Hotel — only two years old at that time — served more than 600 meals that day. After the meeting adjourned, the McCook High School Boys Band under the direction of Leo Kelly provided entertainment in the afternoon.

At the packed banquet room that evening, a trio of Robert Boles on flute, Charles McCarl on the violin and singer Miss Lucile Hiler, provided the music.

After the meal was served, the constitution and bylaws were formally adopted. The terminal points would be Regina, Saskatchewan, and Mexico City, Mexico.

There were no delegates from Canada or North Dakota noted in the reports of the meeting. John McCurdy from Sweetwater, Texas, had traveled the longest distance to be there at 900 miles.

The meeting ended on a high note, with a great deal of enthusiasm and optimism. But the fact of the matter is that by May 10, 1926, the end was near for the auto trails. The federal highway system final draft released only five months after the establishment of the association would show the beginnings of Highway 83 from just east of Bismarck down to Pierre, South Dakota.

The association in about 1929 published a map of the final route from Regina to Laredo.  It would more or less follow present day U.S. 83 from Minot to Abilene, Texas. Eventually, a U.S. Canada Highway 83 Association would emerge.

As for those poor Sandhillers, it would be more than a generation before a dependable road would cut through the dunes. The last part of Highway 83 to be paved was from Thedford to Stapleton in September 1959.

Sources: McCook Gazette, May 10, 1926 and May 12, 1926 editions.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. And The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition to be released Feb. 9.

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Effort Underway to Preserve Historic Hotel near Hwy 83 in White River, SD

Photo by Stew Magnuson

The following is a press release submitted to the Highway 83 Chronicles blog. I welcome submissions of this nature as well as guest bloggers! SM

In an effort to create jobs and revitalize the White River, South Dakota, community, former and future resident Penelope Seitler is planning to renovate the 100 plus year old White River Hotel.  

This is a multi-purpose project with social and business aspects. The plan is for the hotel to hire employees from an interesting source — people coming out of rehab. 

Seitler says there is no place for people to continue their recovery, and businesses are leery of hiring such individuals. By working with counselors, she says they can determine what an individual would be best suited to, and how many hours a week would be appropriate. The employees can stay in substance free dorm style housing at the hotel, until a group home is created. 

“By providing jobs, we are giving people a hand up instead of a hand out,” Seitler said.  The income from the hotel will also add to the tax base of the City, as well as increasing the income of local area merchants. 

A few years ago, a structural engineer took a brief look at the hotel, and pronounced her solid, although in need of extensive repairs. The most recent photos show that the roof, foundation, windows, and doors are not sagging at all; and the rubber roof applied a few years ago is still holding strong. Many community members would like to see something done with the old building, and will support the renovation, while others are interested in tearing it down, making this a time sensitive initiative. The building itself is rich with history, including two stints as a hospital during flu epidemics.  Many local residents remember it from staying there during the school week. One local hunting guide said he could fill the original 11 rooms every night of the year.  The renovation will turn it into a seven-room bed and breakfast with Restaurant open to the public.  “While we would love to realize the guides estimate, we are working with a much more conservative estimate of occupancy,” said Seitler.

“A Hand UP in the Heartland” is the name of the crowd funding campaign started to make this project a reality.  At the campaign site, people can make donations to fund this project, and get something in return.  

“Perks” are items given in thanks for supporting the project with donations that range from various types of art works, to dinners in the restaurant, and free stays at the hotel. Once up and running the bed and breakfast will continue to work within the community to fund other worthy projects, giving others a hand up, instead of a continuing cycle of handouts. 

Crowd-funding has become an important tool for starting or growing businesses, without taking on debt, or are unavailable from a bank.  

For more information, or to fund this project you can go to the web page here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-hand-up-in-the-heartland/x/3597764.   

You can also find more information at the website: www.ahandupintheheartland.com  and the Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/UPintheHeartland?ref=aymt_homepage_panel .

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. 

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

The Mystery of The Great Plains Highway (Partly) Solved

Note: Since this blog was first published on Aug. 26 I have received lots of new information from readers.  I believe this information will lead to many of my questions being answered. Thanks to all who tracked down the information for me or provided tips.  I hope to dig up some documents and maybe more maps of the Great Plains Highway.

By STEW MAGNUSON
For years I searched for the Great Plains Highway.
Before the United States had numbered, federal highways, there were named “trails,” usually informal routes crisscrossing the United States such as the Lincoln Highway, Bankhead Highway, Dixie Highway and hundreds of others. The government had little to do with them. The Good Roads Movement created these routes to promote travel through their towns. The movement comprised both captains of industry—oil, tire and car companies specifically—along with small-town chambers of commerce members who wanted to improve their local roads and connect their towns to the world via the automobile.
 Early in my research about Highway 83 for The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83 I came across a reference to the Great Plains

Highway on a map of Cherry County. It showed it to the west of Brownlee, Nebraska, roughly where State Highway 97 is today. That was back in 2009.
Then I found another reference in an article in a South Dakota newspaper.
Then nothing. Internet searches came up empty. I searched eBay for items, and never found anything. I would occasionally return to my search, but never turned up anything online.
More recently, I came across a third reference in a book about the Fleagle Gang, a group of murderous bank robbers that will be a chapter in the Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma Last American Highway book coming out in February. The author referenced present-day Highway 83 where the gang had committed one of its murders as the Great Plains Highway.
That reference renewed my desire to find out if anything new had popped up online. Many old newspapers are now available on the web that weren’t there five years ago. But again, nothing.
Then about two weeks ago, something miraculous happened. A member of the Fans of U.S. Route 83 page on Facebook  Russell S. Rein (aka ypsi-slim) posted a 1930 map of The Great Plains Highway on the page.
You can imagine my eyes popping out of my head the morning I opened up my iPad and saw that.
There it was, my white whale. The exact route of the Great Plains Highway!
It wasn’t long before I connected with Russell on the phone. It turns out we are kindred spirits and he is an avid collector of memorabilia connected to the old named highway trails. He is also the co-author of an Images of America book, Dixie Highway in Indiana, available on amazon.com.
Where did he get the map? Was my first question. eBay, of course. It was put up for auction when I wasn’t paying attention, and no one else bid on it.
He graciously agreed to send me the map in exchange for a copy of The Last American Highway. (He will be on my comp list for the next two books as well.
Now that I have the map in hand, what can be learned from it?
For one, interestingly, the map is from 1930, and shows Highway 83 in its early iterations. It was published at a time when the old named roads were falling away in favor of the numbered roads system we know today.
The Great Plains Highway for the most part followed present-day Highway 83 from Minot, North Dakota, to Abilene, Texas, some 1,235 miles. 83 is numbered today up to Swan River, Manitoba. The Great Plains Highway veered northwest to Regina, Saskatchewan. After Abilene, the Great Plains Highway went south through San Antonio before terminating in Laredo.
In 1930, none of the highway was paved, according to the key, except, one would imagine, as it passed through major towns.
Highway 83 was also disjointed. Its origins were in North Dakota. But after Pierre, South Dakota, it reappears farther south in bits and pieces.
As for the Great Plains Highway, I still have many questions. When was the association inaugurated? Did it pre-date the creation of the federal highway system in 1926? Whose idea was it to connect Regina and Laredo? And why?
Most of these trails had a logo or symbol to help guide drivers. Was there one in this case? It's not on the map.
The map includes the names of officers in towns along the road. Its headquarters was in North Platte, Nebraska. I am including a picture of the list in this blog. I’m hoping the descendants of these chamber of commerce types may have some information sitting in a closet or an attic somewhere. I already recognize one name on the list. W.B. LaMaster in Perryton, Texas, who went on to become active in the U.S. Canada Highway 83 Association. I spoke to his grandson in Perryton several years ago. It’s not a stretch to believe that the Great Plains Highway Association became the U.S. Canada Highway 83 Association later.
As a side note, can you imagine in those days with only the U.S. mail and telegrams to communicate, creating an association that spanned 1,889 miles of unimproved road? I wonder who was the first to drive it.
I’m certain that newspapers in these small towns ran stories when the association kicked off. But going through microfilm of old newspapers in archives is a painstaking, needle-in-a-haystack process, and I will need some kind of tip to know what dates to start a search. I’m also wondering if there was an earlier Great Plains Highway map that pre-dates 1926.
I’m hoping this blog is read far and wide and those with information can contact me at stewmag (a) yahoo.com. I won’t be able to publish the full story of The Great Plains Highway Association in the Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma version of The Last American Highway because I am putting the finishing touches on that manuscript now. But I hope to have a full picture of the association and its history in the Texas version, which I hope to publish in 2016.
 I’m also going to publish a Wikipedia page in hopes of raising its profile. Because if it’s not in Wikipedia, it doesn’t exist. Now thanks to Russell S. Rein, the Great Plains Highway may live again in the historical record.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. 

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com

Highway 83 Community Brownsville, Texas, to Enter Space Age

Credit: SpaceX

By STEW MAGNUSON

When it comes to transportation history, Highway 83 has it all.

The first keel boats to traveled up the Missouri with the Lewis and Clark Expedition and touched the lands near present day Washburn, North Dakota. Bismarck, North Dakota, and Pierre, South Dakota, were major ports for the steamboats that followed. 

Railway buffs will find plenty to explore in hubs such as Minot, North Dakota, and North Platte, Nebraska. Almost every town on Highway 83 owes its existence to a railroad.

Excellent air museums can be found in Minot and Liberal, Kansas. McCook, Nebraska, and Childress, Texas, are two spots where one can see the remains of World War II airfields.

And Highway 83 itself is a tribute to our national road system and the automobile age.

But did you know that Highway 83 will soon add space travel to this list?

History was made this week when it became known that the company SpaceX  had apparently selected a site northeast of Brownsville, Texas, as a future launch site for its Falcon rockets.

SpaceX was founded in 2003 by billionaire Elon Musk, who, at age 29, had just sold his interest in PayPal to eBay and was looking for a new challenge.

I have a small claim to fame as a journalist, having got the scoop that Musk intended to enter the space business. 

In 2002, I was working as a freelance reporter in California, when I was assigned by the business weekly publication Space News to cover a panel on “space entrepreneurs” in Palo Alto. It was a lightly attended affair with presenters talking about their entrepreneurial ideas. Many of them were long shots, I recognized. Sending anything into space is a wildly expensive proposition. Such projects are normally carried out by large defense contractors with the U.S. government footing the bill. 

The moderator then introduced Musk, whom I had never heard of. But when he mentioned that he had recently sold his interest in PayPal, my ears perked up. This young man, I realized, had a buttload of money.

Credit: SpaceX

He announced that he intended to get into the space business. He said he had three basic questions before starting a venture. Is it intrinsically interesting? Is there a possibility of changing the world for good in some way? And is there a return on investment?

After the panel, I went up to him and pressed him for details. He only said that he was thinking about either building satellites or launching rockets. That was surprising. This was the realm of giant contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. 

And launching rockets is a huge deal. Lowering the cost of sending payloads into space had been a huge technological challenge. Every pound lofted costs hundreds of dollars. 

I called my editor the next day and told him about the big story. I had looked into Musk online and noted that he had attended small groups of like-minded space dreamers — Mars Society types — who met informally in coffee shops. He was also worth one billion dollars! What is a billionaire doing hanging out with the space nerds? I wondered. 

My editor was cynical — and rightly so. One Texas billionaire banker Andrew Beale had the same idea. He spent millions pursuing the dream of launching rockets, test-fired engines and built a launch pad in Texas, but found he couldn’t make a business out of it without government contracts. His venture had closed down the year before. My editor consequently rewrote my lead paragraph about Musk, buried that news in the story 16 paragraphs down, and placed it on page 16 of the publication. 

Within a few short years, Musk was launching rockets based on innovative designs and manufacturing processes that would reduce the cost of launching payloads into space. Today, SpaceX has government and commercial contracts to launch satellites, including one with NASA to resupply the international space station with a reusable spacecraft. It is launch business, and employs 3,000. 

Musk is now as close as one can get to a household name. His Tesla Motor electric car company recently released its patents for any company to use “in good faith” to spur green car development. It manufactures about 30,000 cars per year.  

Although it has not made a formal announcement, SpaceX has reportedly chosen a site north of Brownsville as its new launching pad for nongovernment payloads in the wake of Federal Aviation Administration approval. It will be the world’s first privately owned vertical launch site, according to the Brownsville Herald, which reports that SpaceX is buying up land near the site. It beat out more established locations such as the space coast in Florida.

Rockets being sent into orbit can be seen for hundreds of miles and soon residents along Highway 83 and on nearby South Padre Island will be able to watch them. One can imagine increased tourist traffic on U.S. 83 as spectators make their way to watch the rockets lift off. This may be the beginning of Brownsville becoming a “space city” with other like-minded businesses sprouting around it. 

Alan Bean painting at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

By the way, this is not the only space related story found along Highway 83.

Alan Bean, the fourth man on the moon, was born in Wheeler, Texas.

A Navy test pilot, he was a member of Apollo 12, and first walked on the moon November 19, 1969.

Bean is also an accomplished painter, and is known for his oil paintings of moonscapes.

Highway 83 as it passes through Wheeler is named after him.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, available at Amazon.com and bookstores and gift shops along Highway 83. 

To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com.  Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a) yahoo.com