Carnut,
Thanks for the post. I'm looking forward to visiting this section of 80 soon.
I'm a big Woody Guthrie fan, so I look forward to visiting Longview and playing East Texas Red.
If you can find like-minded folks in Texas, perhaps you can form a Texas 80 Association.
Parsa
As you know U.S. 80 in Texas gets a bit entangled with U.S. 90 and what was dubbed as the Old Spanish Trail between 1915 and 1929 in efforts to achieve an all weather coast to coast trail or highway. At this moment I'm a bit entangled with getting a more wide spread public recognition of that route. However, I do think U.S. 80 from coast to coast is no less important historically speaking and perhaps second only in commercial importance to Route 66.
While our friends along the OST Eastward to Florida feel the need to get recognition for the OST, in my opinion as a coast to coast commercial artery it was a failure given the fact the most commercial traffic continued to flow on U.S. 80 once it reached the junction with U.S. 90. I attribute this to the almost illogical routing of U.S. 90 from Van Horn, Texas to San Antionio, Texas more or less along the Rio Grande River, adding many, many unnecessary miles and deviating significantly from the route chosen by the OSTA in the 1920's. The route oversight was corrected with the construction of I-10 basically following the OST route of the 1920's from San Antonio to Van Horn, curiously ending I-20 at almost the same point U.S. 90 was ended some thirty-five years before, but I'm not at all sure that correction greatly increased the commercial traffic on the Eastern end of I-10. Seems it the most of it from the West still flows onward to Dallas where it can head Northward on I-30 (the old U.S. 67), I-35, or continue Eastward on I-20.
I suppose I should start posting OST related information in that topic area given I now live just a couple of miles South of the original alignment roughly 85 miles West of Houston. I drive portions of that original OST alignment at least once a week, sometimes more often. There are places nearby where the original 1920s concrete is still in service and has never been capped with asphalt.
Jim