Jefferson Davis Highway - End of The Auto Trails

End of The Auto Trails

In the mid-1920s, the disparate system of national auto trails had grown cumbersome, and the federal government imposed a numbering system on the nations's highways. Using a system of even numbers for east–west routes and odd numbers for north–south routes, the numbers were imposed on the auto trails. And rather than designate one number for each auto trail, different sections of each trail were given different numerical designations. However the UDC petitioned the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads to designate the Jefferson Davis as a national highway with a single number. The Bureau's reply casts doubt on whether or not the JDMH ever really existed as a transcontinental highway:

A careful search has been made in our extensive map file in the Bureau of Public Roads and three maps showing the Jefferson Davis highways have been located, but the routes on these maps are themselves different and neither route is approximately that described by you, so that I am somewhat at a loss as to just what route your constituents are interested in. For instance, there is the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway which extends from Miami, Florida to Los Angeles (but not to San Francisco); and there is another Jefferson Davis Highway shown on the Rand-McNally maps which extends from Fairview, Kentucky the site of the Jefferson Davis monument, by a very circuitous route to New Orleans, but I find no route whatever bearing the name Jefferson Davis extending from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. (emphasis added)

This problem may well have been the fault of the UDC themselves. In addition to the planned transcontinental route, they also designated an auxiliary route running from Kentucky to Mississippi, as well as another that ran through Georgia. These ancillary routes were intended to commemorate important venues in Davis' life, but they also contributed to the confusion of the federal government in trying to locate exactly where the Jefferson Davis highway traveled. What is known is that when numbered highways came into existence, the Jefferson Davis National Highway was split among U.S. 1, U.S. 15, U.S. 29, U.S. 61, U.S. 80, U.S. 90, U.S. 99, U.S. 190 and others. But today many of these numbered routes themselves are no longer extant, having been supplanted by the Interstate Highway System.