In 1915, surveyor V.N. Zively, working on behalf of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the state of Texas, surveyed the historic Old San Antonio Road from the Sabine River to the Rio Grande. Many parts of the route Zivley surveyed were still in use at the time, while other parts had been abandoned and were vanishing, or had vanished.

There were few paved roads and no state highways when this survey was made, but a few years later, the state of Texas created a state highway system and began laying down paved highways. In many places, the new highways were laid on top of the Old San Antonio Road. Sometimes the path was changed, however, to accommodate the higher speeds required by automobiles, to install larger bridges over water crossings, or to account for new towns or population centers. In many places where the route changed, the original route was left intact, and it continued to serve as a county road or city street. In other places, the original route was abandoned and became private property.

From 2013 to 2015, Mr. David Carson of TexasCounties.net conducted a project to document the entire length of Zively/DAR route of the Old San Antonio Road. The goal of the project was to include identify every public road that preserves part of this historic route, as well as to identify the places where the historic route is now on private property, or is otherwise no longer driveable.

This page presents a summary of our findings as they pertain to the Old San Antonio Road as a whole. If you are more interested in learning about the Old San Antonio Road in a specific county, you can go back to the index and choose the county you want, or you can begin our county-by-county tour of the Old San Antonio Road in Sabine County.

Zively's route of the Old San Antonio Road - or "Kings Highway," as he preferred to call it - is 539.4 miles from the Texas-Louisiana state line at the Sabine River to the U.S.-Mexico boundary at the Rio Grande. It passes through, or along the boundary of, a total of 21 counties in east, central, and south Texas.

The OSR can be considered as consisting of two adjoining roads - the eastern road, between Louisiana and San Antonio, and the western road, between San Antonio and Mexico. The eastern road was sometimes known in the early 19th century as the Camino Arriba, or Upper Road, while the western road was known as the Lower Road or Lower Presidio Road. Historically, the name "Old San Antonio Road" referred exclusively to the eastern road, but ever since the DAR's project, the name has been adapted to refer to both roads as a whole. (Other roads making up El Camino Real in Texas, such as the Camino de los Tejas and the Upper Presidio Road, were not surveyed by Zively and are not included in the road called Old San Antonio Road or the TexasCounties.net project. See our article, The History of El Camino Real de los Tejas, for more information on the routes of El Camino Real.)

Description of the Route

(Click here to jump to our interactive map on this page.)

The OSR begins on State Highway 21 at the Toledo Bend Reservoir in Sabine County. It passes through San Augustine in San Augustine County, Nacogdoches in Nacogdoches County, and Alto in Cherokee County, and skirts around Crockett in Houston County. While Highway 21's faithfulness to the OSR is good, it is by no means exact, for it has many deviations, some of which are quite significant.

Soon after crossing the Trinity River, Highway 21 departs from the OSR. The historic route is picked up north of Midway in Madison County by State Highway OSR, a highway built specifically for the purpose of preserving Zively's route. Following the Leon-Madison County line, Highway OSR crosses Interstate Highway 45 and passes through Normangee. It then follows the Brazos-Robertson County line, then curves round the northwestern outskirts of Bryan in Brazos County. Highway OSR's faithfulness to Zively's route is nearly perfect, but not completely perfect.

A short distance east of the Brazos River, Highway OSR terminates at Highway 21, which resumes the role it has in east Texas as the main preserver of Zively's route. It passes through Caldwell in Burleson County and several small, unincorporated communities in Lee County. It crosses the Colorado River at Bastrop, in Bastrop County. From there, it goes on to Niederwald and Uhland, on the Caldwell-Hays County line. Highway 21 ends east of San Marcos. Once again, Highway 21 makes many deviations from the historic OSR.

The last leg of the Camino Arriba is preserved by a string of county, local, state, and federal roads. It follows Old Bastrop Highway/Old Bastrop Road on the south side of San Marcos in Hays County. Upon entering Comal County, it coincides with a few miles of Interstate Highway 35. It hops from one city street to another in downtown New Braunfels, then leaves town on Farm-to-Market Road 482. The route is preserved in southwest Comal County and northeast Bexar County by Nacogdoches Road/FM 2252, which ends in Alamo Heights. The last section of this leg, from Alamo Heights to San Pedro Springs Park in downtown San Antonio, is unpreserved.

The Lower Road begins at San Pedro Springs Park in San Antonio. It hops around several local streets, including S. Flores Avenue, Laredo Street, Mission Road, and Espada Road, on its way out of the city. Pleasanton Road preserves the OSR in southern Bexar County and for a few miles in Atascosa County. Zively's route is largely unpreserved from here to the Rio Grande. In Atascosa County, it passes east of Poteet and west of Jourdanton. It runs generally south of and parallel to State Highway 97, past Charlotte, then crosses Highway 97 and cuts across the southeast corner of Frio County. It crosses Highway 97 again about 10 miles west of Fowlerton in La Salle County. It then makes a sharp turn west and goes into Cotulla, again parallel to, but well to the south of, Highway 97. A few miles of streets in Cotulla preserve the route. The OSR crosses the Nueces River on the south side of Cotulla on Business Interstate 35. It makes a relatively straight line from there to Catarina in Dimmit County, then continues mostly westward into the southern tip of Maverick County, finally reaching the Rio Grande about 30 miles south of Eagle Pass.

Summary by Type of Road

For this analysis, we have divided the Old San Antonio Road into 158 individual segments and determined whether each of them is preserved by a public road and, if so, what type of road it is. We have grouped the results into four categories:

• State and federal - This category includes federal interstate highways, U.S. highways, Texas state highways, and Texas farm-to-market roads. These roads are engineered for heavy and/or high-speed travel and are generally well-maintained. They are always surfaced with concrete or asphalt, are always striped, and frequently have shoulders and/or drainage ditches. They are also posted with signs indicating major intersections, speed limits, and other pieces of information. They are usually easy to find on a map. In short, these roads are dependably good - ongoing construction projects notwithstanding. With the exception of Texas State Highway OSR, they are always given a numeric designation.
• County and local - These roads are sometimes designated with numbers; i.e. "County Road 301," sometimes with names; i.e. "Old Bastrop Highway," and sometimes with both numbers and names. They rarely have shoulders, are usually unstriped, and signage is hit-and-miss. Their surfaces run the gamut from concrete to dirt, and their conditions vary from excellent to terrible, depending on which political jurisdiction is responsible for maintenance. County roads in larger, more urban counties, such as Bexar County, tend to be just as good as Texas farm-to-market roads. Some rural counties maintain their roads well (e.g. Cherokee County), while others are sorely lacking (e.g. La Salle County).
• Private - Some segments of the OSR still exist as roads, but they are on private property. At best, these are graded dirt roads that are on par with some public local roads. Some of them, however, have degraded into pairs of tire tracks through the brush, which a 4-wheel-drive pickup could traverse slowly.
• Not preserved - Some segments of the OSR can be seen on satellite photos as traces on the ground, and some clearings, raised roadbeds, or footpaths may be visible on the ground, but there is nothing there that could be called a road. This category also includes segments that are gone without any trace whatsoever.

The table below summarizes the preservation of the OSR according to the type of road. As the table shows, 66 percent of Zively's route of the Old San Antonio Road is preserved, but there is a great difference when comparing the Camino Arriba to the Lower Road. The Camino Arriba is 83 percent preserved, and most all of that is by state or federal roads, but the Lower Road is only 27 percent preserved, and the majority of that is by county or local roads.

Summary By Road

The following roads preserve at least 10 miles of Zively's route

• State Highway 21 - 175.8 miles. This is 33 percent of the total route and 47 percent of the eastern portion from the Sabine River to San Antonio. SH 21 does not preserve Zively's route in one long stretch, however; it leaves and then re-enters Zively's route a total of 23 times. It preserves parts of Zively's route in ten counties: Sabine, San Augustine, Nacogdoches, Cherokee, Houston, Brazos, Burleson, Lee, Bastrop, Caldwell, and Hays. 116.1 miles of SH 21 have an exact or high degree of conformance with Zively's route. 41.1 miles have a medium conformance with Zively's route, and 13.3 miles only follow Zively's route in general, with little exactness.
• State Highway OSR - 59.2 miles in Madison County and on the Leon-Madison and Brazos-Robertson County lines. This road has a very high, but not exact, conformance with Zively's route from end to end. The segment of SH OSR from FM 1119 in Elwood to the Navasota River, at 29.8 miles long, is the longest contiguous segment of Zively's route that is preserved by a modern road with a high degree of conformance.
• Nacogdoches Road/Old Nacogdoches Road/FM 2252 - 18.7 miles in Comal and Bexar Counties. This road has a high degree of conformance with Zively's route from FM 482 in Comal County to Lovelace Blvd in San Antonio, except at Garden Ridge, where the local road, "Nacogdoches Loop," is the historic route.
• Old Bastrop Highway/Old Bastrop Road - 11.9 miles. This road in Hays and Comal Counties has a high, but not exact, conformance with Zively's route from end to end.
• Pleasanton Road/Old Pleasanton Road - 10.7 miles. This road matches Zively's route exactly in Bexar County from Mitchell Lake to the Medina River and from FM 2537 in Bexar County to Hickory Lane in Atascosa County.

Our list of all 158 individual segments of the Old San Antonio Road is shown below. Each segment has a link to a tour page that relates the history of that segment and the area it traverses.

The primary resource for identifying the Old San Antonio Road for this project was Mr. Zively's book of notes and sketches, which he presented to the state of Texas in 1916. This book consists of 114 pages of sketches, where Zively drew the route at a scale of 3,000 feet to an inch. The sketches also include representations of county lines, rivers, creeks, and landmark buildings, plus additional notes inserted by the surveyor. Each sketch is also accompanied by a Zively's surveying measurements in feet and degrees.

Our starting point for interpreting Zively's sketches was to lay each of them over a modern map at the same scale. In places where the historic road is well-preserved, this made it easy to see where an existing road conforms with his route and where it varies from it. Often, some small adjustments had to be made to make the sketches fit. Such adjustments included stretching or compressing one axis of the sketch slightly, or rotating it a few degrees. Obviously, the tools and instruments Zively used to produce his sketches in 1915 were not as precise as today's computer-generated maps, but the sketches of the road segments are, nevertheless, generally highly accurate.

Usually, the additional markings and notes Zively made on the sketches enhanced our ability to interpret them, but sometimes, they introduced confusion or error. Whenever Zively drew a river, railroad, or another road crossing "The Kings Highway," he sometimes showed the intersection occurring at the wrong place. For example, he may show a railroad and a river as being only 300 feet apart, when they are actually a half a mile apart. Because of discrepancies such as these, we took anything that Zively drew on his survey except for the Kings Highway itself with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, the detailed measurements in feet and degrees that Zively provided with his sketches were generally illegible, and therefore of limited use.

Once we knew which existing roads preserved a particular segment of the historic route, the next step was to find any evidence of Zively's route for the other segments. County maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s were a huge help; they would often confirm that a road once existed where one no longer does. Aerial and satellite images may reveal that a clearing through the brush still exists where the Old San Antonio Road once used to be.

Last, but not least, David Carson did extensive field work to document Zively's route. This field work allowed him to see evidence of Zively's route that could not be seen on any map or satellite photographs, such as a raised roadbed, a swath of asphalt road material mixed into the earth, and leftover concrete pilings from an old, torn-down bridge. Each public road that preserves the Old San Antonio Road was identified and driven on from end to end. Each segment was photographed, and overall observations about the road construction and condition (type of surface, number of lanes, existence of striping, etc.) were recorded. Where Zively's route crosses private land, Carson did his best to obtain permission to enter it or, failing that, to photograph it from across the fence.

Some of the observations presented in these articles - like whether a public highway has two lanes or four - may seem like overkill for the purposes of tracing Zively's route and documenting where the Old San Antonio Road used to be, but we feel that it is important to be a comprehensive as possible. The Old San Antonio Road has changed dramatically over the last hundred years, and it is going to continue to change. Roads will be widened; bridges will be moved. Any changes in the modern roads could affect how well they preserve the historic road, so the more we document about the modern roads, the better. The information presented on this page and on this web site will preserve help Zively's route for future researchers even after the highways have moved and the clearings in the brush have completely disappeared.