The first meeting of the Dixie Overland Highway Association was held in Columbus on July 17, 1914, to celebrate the arrival of the pathfinders from Savannah. An organization was appointed. The following year, on July 24, the association met in Savannah for its second meeting. It received reports that the highway project was then about 50 percent constructed. The members then formed a permanent organization. On February 14, 1917, the Dixie Overland Highway Association was incorporated in the state of Georgia for a 20-year period as a nonprofit organization, Its purposes are to foster the construction and use of a highway from Savannah, Georgia, to Los Angeles, California, through eight states, seventy-four counties and nearly two hundred towns and villages; to strive for uniform, wise and equitable road legislation in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California; to aid in bringing about efficient road administration; to seek continuous and systematic maintenance of all roads and their classification according to traffic requirements; to promote cooperation in 'units' or 'locals' on the parts of towns, cities, communities, precincts and other political subdivisions; to mark the highway; to give publicity to its historical character, by monuments, guide-books, bulletins and other printed matter; to affiliate and cooperate with other good roads associations. The Dixie Overland Highway Association debated on a definitive western end point for the Dixie Overland Highway in southern California. California politicians Stanley Hufflund and Ed Fletcher convinced the association in an August 1918 meeting to choose San Diego over Los Angeles. In May 1919, the Executive Committee of the Dixie Overland Highway Association approved San Diego as the western terminus and elected Colonel Ed Fletcher to be president of the association.
