Official Map of the Highway Sytem of Texas [Centennial Edition]: Stene, 1936

• Title: Centennial Edition | Official Map of the Highway System of Texas
  
• Author: R.M. Stene
• Date: 1936
• Condition: Excellent - Issued folding on a clean sheet.
• Inches: 32 3/4 x 26 3/4 [Paper]
• Centimeters: 83.18 x 67.94 [Paper]
• Product ID: 308753

Celebration of the Centenary of Texas Independence!

Issued in 1936 as the Centennial Edition Official Map of the Highway System of Texas, this large-format folding road map was published by the State Highway Commission in celebration of the centenary of Texas independence. The map presents a highly detailed statewide view of the evolving Texas highway network, with state and U.S. highways prominently picked out in red against a pale yellow ground, while counties, towns, railroads, rivers, lakes, and other geographic features are carefully delineated in fine black and blue linework. Decorative photographic panels around the margins depict notable public buildings, historic sites, scenic roads, bridges, missions, and landmarks, including the Texas State Capitol and Centennial Exposition architecture, transforming the practical road map into a celebratory portrait of a modernizing Texas. A legend at lower left distinguishes highway types and road surfaces, while the lower-right corner incorporates the “Texas Under Six Flags” device and printed music for “Texas, Our Texas,” reinforcing the map’s strong Centennial and state-pride character.

The reverse is devoted to an extraordinary pictorial collage arranged within the outline of an enormous Lone Star, the defining emblem of the Republic and State of Texas. Dozens of small halftone views—each individually captioned—record the breadth of Texas life and landscape in the 1930s, including missions and Spanish colonial ruins, churches and courthouses, ranching and agriculture, oil fields and industry, rivers and waterfalls, highways, urban scenes, and celebrated natural landmarks. At lower right, an ornamental title cartouche identifies the sheet as the Centennial Edition Official Map of the Highway System of Texas, accompanied by a concise history of the state under six flags and the names of the members of the State Highway Commission. More than a conventional map verso, this densely illustrated composition was conceived as a visual travelogue and promotional survey of Texas at its Centennial—simultaneously useful to motorists and deeply evocative of the state’s history, natural resources, infrastructure, and regional identity.

Texas Highways 

The Texas Highway Department had been established in 1917, and its original statewide plan designated 26 principal state highways totaling about 8,865 miles. By the Centennial year, many of those original trunk routes had been constructed or substantially improved, and by 1937 the department reported that all 26 routes in that initial plan were complete. Nearly 75 percent of the state highways were paved by then, although roughly 14,000 miles of the state system still lacked pavement and most county roads remained unpaved.

The system’s principal achievement was connectivity. It brought previously isolated regions into dependable contact with larger commercial centers and created recognizable statewide and national corridors, including U.S. routes whose numbering had been established in Texas beginning in 1927. Travel was nevertheless slower and more variable than today: paving quality changed from route to route, grades and alignments often followed older roads or local geography, and motorists had to contend with narrow roadways, limited bridges, weather-related conditions, and the frequent passage of highways through town centers.

Background on Creator

Robert Martin Stene (1872–1954)—was an American cartographer, draftsman, and photographer whose work became closely associated with the visual documentation and promotion of Texas highways during the first half of the twentieth century. Born near Norway Lake, Minnesota, Stene reportedly began his working life in railroad and telegraph employment, then developed practical photographic and drafting skills before moving into surveying, engineering-related map work, and cartography.

Stene came to Texas before 1900 and lived and worked in Austin, Dallas, and Galveston at various points, including employment connected with photography and the Santa Fe Railroad. He later studied mapping in San Francisco and worked in Arizona and California as a map draftsman with mining engineers, subsequently undertaking hydraulic and mining-engineering work that included surveying rivers and canyons for prospective dam sites. This varied technical background gave him experience in the precise field observation, drafting, and graphic communication that are apparent in his later highway maps.

Around 1927, Stene returned to Texas and joined the Texas Highway Department as a cartographer. He remained associated with the department’s official mapmaking program into the postwar period and reportedly retired in 1950. His work belongs to the important era in which state highway maps evolved beyond simple route diagrams into carefully designed public-information documents—part navigational aid, part tourism promotion, and part visual statement of Texas’s economic and civic development.