TexasHighwayMan.com turns 15!

Fifteen years ago today, I put my esoteric interest out for the world to see.  On March 1, 1998, the “Texas HighwayMan Pages” were born.  Just like today, I covered everything I knew about Texas roads and the San Antonio freeway system.  I still have that original site archived and wow, how things have changed, both in terms of the subject matter as well as in the quality of web publishing (and my skills in doing so.)  That first site looks so amateurish today: cheesy, grainy, and oftentimes animated (for no good reason other than I could) graphics, brightly colored and/or busy backgrounds, low-res photos, and a generally clunky layout.  But back then, that was cutting edge stuff.  That first site was hosted on express-news.net, back when the Express-News actually provided consumer Internet access.  About a month later, I added the Getting Around Germany section of my site, so I’ll be celebrating that anniversary im nächsten Monat.

Folks ask me why I put the site together and keep it up.  Well, the answer is that it’s the classic labor of love.  Although it seems like an esoteric topic, just about anyone who drives is interested in knowing what’s going on with the roads.  Being interested in transportation all my life, I had a lot of the answers to folks’ questions in my head or at least in a pile of old newspapers and other assorted planning documents in my closet, so I thought why not share it with the world?  And that’s what I’ve been doing for 15 years and plan to do for at least the next 15.