Founded in 1913 to mark and promote an automobile route across several states, the Ozark Trails Association was created by William Hope Harvey of Arkansas, who wanted to improve roads to his Ozark mountain retreat. With thousands of members from Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri attending annual meetings, the association also promoted tourism and educated the public about the need for better highways and roads. The southern route of the Ozark Trail crossed the Texas panhandle through Collingsworth, Childress, Hall, Briscoe, Swisher, Castro, and Parmer counties. In 1920, members from these Texas counties and two New Mexico counties met and voted to follow the national group's lead in placing reinforced concrete signposts along the route in their counties. James E. Swepston of Tulia led this effort and was elected president of the national association at its 1920 annual meeting. A concrete obelisk placed in Tulia originally showed the distance from Tulia to various towns on the trail, and it remains a local landmark. In 2000, the Texas Historical Commission designated the Ozark Trail marker a State Archeological Landmark. The obelisk also recalls the Ozark Trails Association, which disbanded in 1924 and was one of many private highway associations that sponsored automobile routes before the federal government began numbering and marking such highways after World War I.