Glenn Dromgoole

Author Stew Magnuson, who lives in Virginia, said he woke up in the middle of the night in 2009 with a fully-formed book idea in his head. He would travel the entire length of U.S. Highway 83 from Canada to Mexico – 1,885 miles -- and write about it.

Later that year he made the first of two trips on the highway, starting in Westhope, N.D., and following it into Kansas. In May 2010 he resumed the journey and explored U.S. 83 all the way to Brownsville, Texas.

His book idea turned into three volumes under the heading “The Last American Highway.”The first, published in 2014, covered the Dakotas. The second, published in 2015, covered Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. And now he has published the final installment in the trilogy – Texas, all 895 miles of it. Each volume is $19.99 paperback.

It is a fascinating narrative. Magnuson, who grew up in Nebraska, mixes in history, interviews, observations, stories and personal feelings as he drives through the various small towns and cities along the route.

Abilene, being the largest city on U.S. 83, gets about 15 pages, including an interview with hamburger proprietor Larry Olney of Larry’s Better Burger Drive-In on Treadaway (U.S. 83); a recounting of the shootout involving two newspaper editors in 1885; and a lengthy account of horseless carriage salesman Eddie Rickenbacker coming to Abilene in 1909 in hopes of driving William Jennings Bryan around town and then selling cars to cowboys.

U.S. 83 in Texas follows a fairly straight route south from Perryton to Laredo, then turns east to Harlingen, then south to Brownsville.

Magnuson stopped at libraries, gas stations, cafes, newspaper offices, and other venues gathering material for his book. He made the trip alone in his 1999 Mazda Protégé, accompanied only by an eclectic selection of Texas music CDs. Well, once he picked up an 80-year-old hitchhiker outside Junction, who rode with him to Uvalde.

“Every town has a story to tell,” Magnuson says. Comanches, Spanish explorers, Bonnie and Clyde, race relations, politics, football, music, curio shops, drive-in theaters – all come into play as the writer travels Texas along U.S. 83.

At the end of the book Magnuson includes a four-page update about a few things that have changed since he made the trip seven years ago. Some people have died, some businesses have closed, there’s been an oil boom and bust or two.

“I’m convinced,” Manguson concludes, “that if I turned around and headed back north on Highway 83 I could write an entirely new book covering what I have left out.”

Well, he didn’t. So read this one. Sitting in your comfortable chair, instead of behind the wheel, you too can explore the Last American Highway.

Read more at stewmagnuson.com.



Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is an anthology of West Texas Stories. He and his wife Carol own Texas Star Trading Company in downtown Abilene. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.