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It is a Back Country Drive on Olde Highway 80
November 4, 2023 @ 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
FreePlease Join Us for a Back Country Drive on Olde Highway 80
This event is part of the Old Spanish Trail Centennial Conference and Celebration to be held at the Marriott Hotel in El Cajon, California on November 2-5, 2023.
Before Interstate 8 there was US Highway 80. Before US Highway 80 there was an auto trail that stretched from San Diego to Florida. It was called the Old Spanish Trail Auto Highway and it is 100 years old!
Download the information and registration packet
Other conference events include the seminar speakers on Friday morning:
- Bonnie Fletcher, San Diego native, descendant of Col. Ed Fletcher, Trustee of the San Diego History Center and Co-chair of the Ed & Mary Fletcher Foundation,
- Robert M. Harding, Jr, writer, lecturer and VP of the Lakeside Historical Society,
- John W. Murphey, architectural historian and research consultant now based in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
- Connie Sue Low, Travel and Texas history writer, and
- Charlotte Kahl, President of the Old Spanish Trail Centennial Association.
Topics include:
- Building Olde US 80,
- Ed Fletcher: Bringing Highways to San Diego,
- Remembering Harry Locke – Prolific US Early Highway Designer,
- and more….
About Us
The Old Spanish Trail Centennial Celebration Association (OST100) was organized to locate, revitalize and preserve the roadway, businesses and historic sites of the original 1920s OLD SPANISH TRAIL (OST) auto highway and to create a decade long Centennial Celebration reenacting annual conferences held by the original Old Spanish Trail Association of the early 1900s.
Plans began in 2002 for a decade-long OST Centennial Celebration with the first reenactment set for 2015 in Mobile, Alabama. Annual conference reenactments have been held in various cities and will culminate in a grand historic transcontinental motorcade in 2029.
About the History
Col. Ed Fletcher, then vice president of the Old Spanish Trail Association, hosted the first San Diego OST conference in 1923.
The San Antonio, Texas OST Headquarters Executive Director brought together California highway engineers and commissioners, chambers of commerce and Good Roads Club members. They discussed how best to pave the OST into and across southern California. El Cajon Boulevard and the El Cajon to Alpine, Pine Valley and Boulevard corridors were chosen as the OST route.