Route 17

Route 17 is the name of a location seen in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise. Specifically, it refers to a location featured in the remake series, which began with the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and continued in the 2006 prequel film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

Route 17 was a road that ran north to south through West Texas, passing through the town of Fuller in Travis County. It was a narrow stretch of road, but one of the few streets that passed near the Hewitt residence. The Blair Meat Co. was also located on this road. The posted speed limit on Route 17 was 50 miles per hour. In June, 1969, a group of young motorists were traveling through Texas en route to an Army recruiting station when they were terrorized by a group of bikers. While trying to evade the aggressive motorcyclists, the driver of the car, Eric, inadvertently hit a cow that sent the car off the road. A man calling himself Sheriff Hoyt arrived on the scene and killed one of the bikers, before terrorizing the injured motorists.

On August 18th, 1973, a van driven by five youths named Kemper, Erin, Morgan, Andy and Pepper was passing through Texas from Mexico on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Erin through the butt end of a joint out onto the highway.

They found a young woman stumbling down the highway and picked her up. The woman was incoherent and babbled on about the "bad man". When she realized that they were driving her closer to the place where she had only recently escaped from, she produced a .357 Magnum from her vagina and shot herself in the head. They pulled the van off the side of the road to discuss the matter. During the course of heated comments, Kemper grew frustrated over a previous argument about buying a pinata filled with pot while in Mexico. He walked the pinata off the side of the road and threw it into a cow pasture. The cows were very happy.

Kemper and the others eventually had to get off Route 17 in order to find help. Ultimately, they fan afoul of Sheriff Hoyt.