Texas Highways Magazine Celebrates 50 Years With New Look

For half a century, Texas Highways magazine has crisscrossed the state, showcasing the Lone Star State’s top tourist destinations and hidden gems.

Launched in 1974 by the Texas Department of Transportation, the magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a brand new look. Emily Roberts Stone, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, spoke to the Texas Standard about the anniversary.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity:

Texas Standard: Fifty years is a milestone. Can you tell me a little about how the magazine started?

Emily Roberts Stone: Absolutely. It actually started in 1953 as an in-house engineering magazine for the Texas Highway Department. Over the years, it evolved to incorporate more travel, history, and culture, and then became a consumer magazine in 1974, entirely dedicated to travel in Texas.

Our first issue, May 1974, was 36 pages long and had no advertising; subscriptions at the time were $4.50. Our current July/August issue, which is our official 50th anniversary issue, is 160 pages long.

I think the magazine does a great job of uniting readers around their shared love of Texas and its landscapes. Obviously, the magazine industry has changed tremendously in 50 years, from mass media to niche media. So we’ve really drawn on our experience as a traditional brand that our readers trust. We really want to be that trusted guide to Texas, rather than the kind of generic recommendations you might find on sites like TripAdvisor.

To mark your 50th anniversary, you’ve made some major changes to the magazine. Can you tell me about some of the new looks you’re introducing?

This has been an 18-month project from start to finish. From the beginning, we knew we really wanted to invest in creating the highest quality print products possible. We are putting our faith in our print products, so we will now be printing them on a thicker matte paper that will allow readers to keep their copies for longer.

We know our readers refer to these issues when planning trips or carrying them with them on their travels, so we wanted it to truly feel like a keepsake.

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You mentioned that your readers know Texas very well: all its intricacies, all the hidden corners. How do you try to create stories that capture their attention?

We have this new section called Book Now, which gives you more detailed guidance on what to book and when to book it, similar to how travel agents used to do it before. For example, when to book camping sites or Lost Maples if you want to see the fall colors (which, by the way, is now).

And then we have our postcard section where we tell our stories, essays and Q&As. There is endless news to tell about Texas.

I wonder, when you talk to people who work at travel magazines in other states, if they might be a little envious of the content you have to work with?

Oh, sure. And Texas obviously has a big personality and is incredibly multicultural. And the landscapes are very different depending on what part of the state you are in. I think that’s both a blessing and a challenge.

I understand this issue will be the magazine’s largest to date. What are some of the stories readers can expect in the 50th anniversary edition?

We decided to focus this issue on small towns. We’re sort of the unofficial magazine for small towns in Texas. So with this issue, we have our annual list of small towns to visit now, which is a reader favorite.

This year, our features editor, Chris Hughes, is inviting Texas authors to write about some of the towns that inspired their work. For example, we have May Cobb writing about Longview in East Texas. We have C.S. Humble writing about Monahans.

And we also have a feature on the Permian-Odessa high school football rivalry that inspired “Friday Night Lights.” The movie came out 20 years ago, so we thought it would be a good time to revisit the topic.