Dec. 18, 2025
By Ryan LaFontaine
AUSTIN — Highway designations can be tricky. To get where you’re going in Texas, you can take an FM to a PR and that would be no BS.
“BS” as in Business State Highway. What did you think it meant?
Texas is home to the nation’s largest highway system, and with that comes one of the most colorful collections of highway designations in the country. From State Highways and Spurs to Loops, and a few true one-of-a-kind routes, the list seems longer than a CVS receipt.
No discussion of Texas highways is complete without Farm-to-Market and Ranch-to-Market roads. Born in 1937 to help farmers “get out of the mud,” the FM and RM system has grown into a network of more than 3,400 routes.
Most are labeled FM (3,257), a smaller number RM (176), and no one is entirely sure why one becomes a farm road and another a ranch road. Theories range from cattle trailers versus combines to pure TxDOT mystery.
“RMs are predominately in the Texas Hill Country and west; typically ranches instead of farms,” said Michael Chamberlain, director of data management in TxDOT’s Transportation Planning and Programming Division. “The roads themselves look about the same and are typically about the same size. So the only difference might just be cattle watching you on the side of the road instead of cotton.”
As if FM and RM wasn’t already enough, there’s also RRs. But luckily there’s only one of those. Ranch Road One, leading to the LBJ Ranch, is part of a highway system as big, varied and occasionally quirky as Texas itself, proving that here, even the roads have personality.
You can take the Dallas North Tollway north, but you can also take it south. You might think I-35E goes east—on account of the large E in the name— but it goes north and south.
Take the word “Loop.” Texans use it freely and lovingly, even when the road in question isn’t officially a loop—or loop-shaped at all. In Houston, I-610 is simply “The Loop.” In San Antonio, I-410 is almost universally called “Loop 410.”
Then there are the actual State Highway Loops, some of which are straight as an arrow. Austin’s Loop 1, better known as MoPac, cuts right through the city, while Loop 168 in Tenaha proudly holds the title of Texas’ shortest highway at just one block long.
Then there are business routes, which Texas marks in its own distinctive way, sometimes with a small letter added below the route number to show which town’s business route comes first, second or third along a highway. It’s part navigation, part road trip trivia, and entirely Texan.
Speaking of road trips, if you’re traveling, chances are you’ll be using one of the 25 interstate highways in Texas, which has more interstate miles than any other state.
You can check out all the Texas highway designations and use Drive Texas for real-time traffic updates to get you fully prepared for wherever you’re headed.