When Did Billboards Disappear?

Burma-Shave. Rock City. Barns. When Did Billboards Disappear?

Burma-Shave Signs, Removed by 1963

The beginning of the end of most billboards along Interstate highways was in 1965, the year I graduated from high school. It was just two years after I had started driving.

One of Lady Bird Johnson’s enduring legacies was the Highway Beautification Act. Her husband, President Lyndon Johnson, signed the act into law on October 22, 1965.

Click here to read about the night the House passed the law.

What Did the Law Say?

The law specified that billboards be at least 660 feet from the highway, allowed only in commercial and industrial areas, and only two per block.

Barns with messages painted on them were excluded from the ban.

Not only did the Highway Beautification Act control billboards along the Interstate Highway System, it specified the removal or screening of junkyards near the highway.

The federal government would help states compensate owners for billboards removed.

1991 legislation specified there would be no billboards on state-designated scenic highways.

States Can Vary

Each state negotiated its own regulations within this framework.

Vermont banned all billboards on its highways.

Forty-five years later, on a recent trip through Georgia and North Carolina, I saw noticeably more billboards there than in several nearby states, a visible signal of the negotiations that must have accompanied those decisions.

It reminded me of that long-ago legislation and that one person can make a difference

Were you driving yet in 1965?

Do you remember the Burma-Shave signs?

Do you remember the signs on barns, “See Rock City”?

To you and the memories you keep for your grandchildren about life in another time.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru

Author, “Who Gets to Name Grandma? The Wisdom of Mothers and Grandmothers”

http://newgrandmas.com

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