As a Houstonian, I’m
used to FM (farm-to-market)
road designations and was
surprised during a recent
trip to Austin to find 2222
designated as RM (ranch-to-
market). Has it always been
RM 2222 and I just never
noticed it? And what’s the
difference between an FM
and an RM road, anyway?
There are few things in
this world that bring the
Texanist as much plea-
sure as a long drive down a winding
ribbon of beautiful backcountry
blacktop. And when one finds one-
self on a particularly fine example
of Texas road, nine times out of
ten it’s going to be one of the two-
lane beauties that are part of our
intricate farm-to-market network,
an amazing web of bucolic byways
for which we can thank some for-
ward-thinking politicians and the
Texas Department of Transpor-
tation. Decades ago, these folks
tasked themselves with “getting
the farmer out of the mud”—in
other words, making it easier for
farmers to get their goods to town
by laying down some asphalt where
none had been laid down before.
The resulting system of sec-
ondary roadways was begun in
1936, when a preliminary sectionwas constructed between Mount
Enterprise and Shiloh, in Rusk
County. Thirteen years later the
Legislature formalized the trail-
blazing endeavor by passing the
Colson-Briscoe Act, which allot-
ted an annual $15 million in state
funds for the construction of farm-
to-market roads, a number that has
been adjusted upward over time.
Today there are more than 40,000
miles of these connective arter-
ies splayed out across the state,
accounting for more than half of
Texas’s total highway mileage.
So what’s the difference between
FMs and RMs? Long story short,
initially all of the roads in the
system were FMs. But ranchers,
who also used those roads, ran-
kled at being referred to, at least
by default, as farmers. TxDOT ac-
quiesced, and in 1942, voilà, the
ranch-to-market road came into
existence. Other than the appella-
tion, though, there is no discern-
ible difference between the two.
One much-cited rule of thumb
asserts that the FMs lie to the east
of U.S. 281 and the RMs to the west.
But that’s a very loose rule—see
RM 2222, for instance, which is
well east of U.S. 281. In actuality,
RMs tend to be clustered in the
Hill Country and points westward,
while FMs are found pretty much
all across the state.
Over time, as urban sprawl has
absorbed more and more of the
countryside, a number of FMs
and RMs have lost their agrarian
vibe, now that they’re traversed by
droves of commuting office work-
ers and surrounded by sundry retail
outlets. There are many examples
of this, such as Westheimer Road,
in Houston,A:
THE TEXANIST is senior editor
David Courtney. Send him
your questions at texanist
@texasmonthly.com and be sure
to tell him where you’re from.BOB GRAY, HOUSTONOFFERING FINE ADVICE AND KEEN OBSERVATIONS SINCE 2007The Texanist
CONTINUED ON PAGE 121Q:
128 TEXAS MONTHLY ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR