HSU Students Bring Bankhead Highway Exhibit to the Big Country

(Abilene, Texas) While it may not be as well known as Route 66, the Bankhead Highway in its prime crossed 850 miles of Texas connecting the East Coast to the West Coast. Known as the “Broadway of America,” the highway served to introduce many Big Country towns to the rest of the United States.

To ensure the Bankhead Highway’s significance is not forgotten, a group of Hardin-Simmons University Communication students has developed a traveling museum exhibit to shine a spotlight on the road on its 100th birthday.

Called “The Bankhead at 100: Bricks that Connected a Nation,” the exhibit is part of the Texas Fort Trail program, and area museums have already signed up to host the exhibit. The exhibit is expected to travel first to the Eastland County Museum.

Dr. Tim Chandler, professor of communication at HSU, envisioned the project as a way for his students to get hands-on skills in a variety of key areas.

“It gives our students a lot of opportunities to do hands-on marketing, advertising and social media work for a real client,” Chandler said. “That’s the part I find compelling – it’s not just an exercise, it’s something that’s going to be used.”

Components of the traveling exhibit prepared by the students include posters, museum panels, a website (http://txfortsbankhead.wix.com/highway), videos, brochures, invitation cards, and a social media kit.

Terry Simmons, board president of the Eastland County Museum, said the exhibit was a perfect fit for their museum given the road’s importance to the region. In fact, the Eastland County Museum is located on the old Bankhead Highway in downtown Eastland in a former bank building.

“We’re excited about the exhibit,” he said. “The Bankhead Highway was a major artery for the community for many years until I-20.”

While the museum does not have any permanent exhibits on the Bankhead Highway, Simmons said the museum staff may gather ideas from the traveling Bankhead exhibit for a possible future permanent exhibit. He said the marketing materials prepared by the HSU students will be very useful to the museum’s small and primarily volunteer staff in publicizing the exhibit.

Exhibit Prep

The road to the Bankhead traveling museum exhibit began a little over a year ago.

The spark for the project came in spring 2015 when Chandler took his class to a Texas Forts Trails board meeting in Cisco at the Mobley Hotel, the first hotel owned by Conrad Hilton. At the meeting, the group connected with author Dan Smith, who had written a book titled, “The Bankhead Highway in Texas,” and heard about an upcoming military convoy reenacting the first journey on the Bankhead.

Three HSU students joined a leg of the convoy of vintage Army vehicles from the Military Vehicle Preservation Association recreating a 1920 Transcontinental Motor Convoy along the Bankhead highway. Student Kayla Pepper said she enjoyed the opportunity to practice being an embedded journalist riding in a 1944 Wylls jeep and meeting the MPVA drivers who traveled from around the country to retrace the route.

Pepper, a senior from Lubbock majoring in public relations and advertising with a minor in marketing, later created a book and several videos from the convoy experience.

“It was really hard work and it was time consuming, but it’s so cool to have something tangible at the end of the project,” she said.

The students later presented about the convoy experience at a meeting of the West Texas Historical Association held in Abilene. The class performed field research as well including a visit to a ranch near Breckenridge that contained a portion of Bankhead highway, the wagon road that pre-dates the highway, and the new highway 180.

The Bankhead Highway is an important part of the region’s history that many people don’t realize, said Taylor Conrad, a sophomore from Abilene who is majoring in Public Relations/Advertising/Political Science with a computer science minor.

“It literally broadened our horizons. It was a manifestation of Manifest Destiny, connecting the East Coast to the West Coast. It gave people freedom to go at their own pace,” she said. Conrad created the website that accompanies the exhibit, which she said furthered her skills in designing websites and gave her experience working in a collaborative group setting.

She said the effect of the highway in some ways could be compared to the impact of today’s social media. “It connected individuals, acting as a conduit for people, and it allowed small towns and ideas to grow,” she said.

The students’ goal was to make the exhibit easy for smaller communities to host by preparing marketing materials that could be customized by the museums.

A social media kit was designed by McKynna Cocanougher, a senior political science and public relations and advertising double major from Fort Worth, and Erick Potts, a communications major with a marketing minor from Brea, California. They created a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Bankhead-at-100-Bricks-that-Connected-a-Nation-558607747647875/) and worked to connect the social media content with the exhibit’s panels and brochures. The students created social media posts for use by hosts of the exhibit.

Katie Burris, a sophomore majoring in public relations and advertising, worked on the exhibit’s poster and invitation card. She said she gained skills in Adobe Illustrator that helped her land a summer job in Albany at Young Life.

Samantha Trimble, who graduated in May 2016 with a degree in Behavioral Science in Communication/Public Relations, designed the brochure. Trimble, who hails from Rapids City, South Dakota, said she enjoyed meeting the historians who care so much about the Bankhead Highway.

“It made me hope one day I’m doing something that I love so much,” she said. “It’s important to understand our history and keep history alive.”

“Hail! Hail! the Caravan”

A recreation of the song, “Hail! Hail! the Caravan,” which was written at the time of the road’s creation, turned out to be a compelling component of the project. After students saw the song lyrics in Dan Smith’s book on the Bankhead Highway, they decided to recreate the song.

The task fell primarily to Steph Hord, who graduated in May 2016 with a major in Music Business. Hord, who calls Montgomery home, said she enjoyed researching the sheet music and finding appropriate harmonizations to fill out the piece. Hord partnered with a campus vocal pop ensemble called Upbeat to record the song in Woodward-Dellis. (Listen to the final version of the song: https://www.facebook.com/558607747647875/videos/588546331320683/)

“To be a part of reliving of a historical moment was really neat,” she said, adding that she heard that members of the West Texas Historical Society teared up when they first heard the recorded version of the song.

Partner in Heritage Tourism

Chandler said he has been working with his classes on projects that support heritage tourism with the Texas Forts Trail and its director Margaret Hoogstra for many years.

“With this traveling exhibit, the goal is to give the small venues along the Texas Forts Trail something new to showcase,” he said. To make the exhibit user friendly for smaller museums, HSU students made it portable, affordable, and self explanatory.

Chandler said he see more museum exhibits ahead for future classes.

“It’s sort of a win-win for everybody,” he said.

Conrad said the project helped her realize the importance of preserving and calling attention to important pieces of American heritage.

“History is something that can die if you don’t work to preserve it,” she said.

Read more about student roles in the project: http://txfortsbankhead.wix.com/apms2016