Texas State Highway 4
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| Route information | ||||
| Maintained by TxDOT | ||||
| Length: | 24.4 mi (39.3 km) | |||
| Existed: | before 1939 – present | |||
| Major junctions | ||||
| West end: | MX 180 in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico | |||
   I-69E / US 77 / US 83 in Brownsville SH 48 in Brownsville |
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| East end: | Boca Chica State Park | |||
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State Highway 4 or SH 4 is an east–west state highway that runs from the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville to the Gulf of Mexico at Boca Chica State Park. Outside of Brownsville, it parallels the Rio Grande. It is the southernmost Texas state highway.
SH 4 was one of the original twenty-six state highways proposed in 1917, overlaid on top of the Del Rio – Canadian Highway. From 1919 the routing mostly followed present-day U.S. Highway 83 from Perryton, Childress, to Aspermont. From there, it followed present-day FM 610 and SH 70 to Blackwell. It then continued down present-day U.S. Highway 277 into San Angelo and Sonora. From there, it split into two routes. The western branch terminated in Del Rio and the eastern terminated at Uvalde. The road at this time also had numerous alternate routes simultaneously marked as SH 4, along with occasionally signed SH 4A routes (although most of those routes were given their own numbers by the 1930s).
In 1926, U.S. Highway 83 was routed over SH 4 from Oklahoma to Del Rio. The eastern branch from Sonora to Del Rio was then given the designation State Highway 55. Both SH 4 and US 83 were marked concurrently at the time. Unable to create the proposed road, a new route was under construction southeast from Aspermont, taking SH 4 to Anson. By 1928,SH 4 was extended through Abilene and Coleman to end at Brady, taking over SH 107. By 1931, SH 4 and US 83 extended through Junction, Uvalde, Carrizo Springs, Laredo and finally, Brownsville, taking over the proposed Pharr-Brownsville segment of the now severely reworked SH 12 and portions of SH 30 and SH 55. The old route from Brady to Santa Anna was changed back to SH 107. THere was an alternate routing east to Artesia Wells. By 1933, this alternate routing was renumbered as SH 189. By 1936, this route was swapped with SH 48. By 1939, the route was turned over to U.S. Route 83, with the only remaining portion of SH 4 being the current routing from Brownsville eastward.
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