Texas State Highway 12
highway in Texas
State Highway 12 (SH 12) is a west–east state highway in the U.S. state of Texas that runs from Interstate 10 (I-10) in Vidor to the Louisiana state line at Deweyville. The route was designated on August 27, 1959, as a renumbering of SH 235 to match the numbering of Louisiana Highway 12 (LA 12), with which it connects.
Route description
SH 12 begins at an intersection with I-10 and US 90 on the north side of Vidor, and travels to the northeast. It travels through lightly populated country before reaching the Sabine River at Deweyville. The route continues into Louisiana as Louisiana Highway 12.
History
SH 12 was one of the original twenty five state highways proposed on June 21, 1917. It was an ambitious undertaking to construct a border-to-border highway hugging the southern Texas coast and border with Mexico, and was to be named the 'Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway.'
In 1917 the route followed present day Interstate 10 eastward from El Paso to roughly Esperanza. From there the road was proposed to go to Presidio (not built) and followed FM 170 from there to near Lajitas. It was proposed from there to hug the Rio Grande through Big Bend and towards Langtry (again, never built) where it would have met up with present day U.S. Highway 90. On US 90, the road would have gone into Del Rio and, via present day US 277, into Eagle Pass and through to Paso de Francia via present day FM 1021 and FM 1472 to Laredo.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Texas State Highway 12” is highway in Texas. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Texas, State and Highway, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “highway in Texas” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2503644. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1917, 1021 and 1472.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Texas State Highway 12”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Texas State Highway 12 primary sources, Texas State Highway 12 archive and Texas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Texas State Highway 12” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.