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Concept
Farm-to-market road
Summary
In the United States, a farm-to-market road or ranch-to-market road (sometimes farm road or ranch road for short) is a state highway or county road that connects rural or agricultural areas to market towns. These are better quality roads, usually a highway, that farmers and ranchers use to transport products to market towns or distribution centers. Historically used throughout the country, today the term is primarily associated with a large state-maintained highway system in Texas.
By 1930, counties and townships across the U.S. had built a large number of farm-to-market roads, many of which were in need of repairs and safety improvements. The Chief of the Bureau of Public Roads, Thomas Harris MacDonald, considered this need to be driven not by insufficient funding but by inefficient planning and inadequate equipment on the part of thousands of counties. He advocated for an expansion of state-maintained highway systems through the federal-aid highway program, so that counties could focus on maintaining fewer roads to a higher level of service.
Farm to Market Roads in Texas
This term is most closely associated with Texas, where Farm to Market Road and Ranch to Market Road indicate roadways that are part of the state's system of secondary and connecting routes, built and maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Texas established this system in 1949 to improve access to rural areas. As with other state-maintained highways in Texas, all Farm or Ranch to Market roads are paved. The system consists primarily of two-lane roads, although some segments have an additional number of lanes, while some have been upgraded to freeways. Speed limits along these roads vary, but may be as high as in rural areas, such as in Andrews and Pecos counties (for example, along FM 1788, FM 1776, and FM 1053).
The first farm-to-market road in Texas was completed in January 1937 during the Great Depression. It connected Mount Enterprise and the former community of Shiloh in Rusk County. The route was long and was constructed at a cost of $48,015.
Official source
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