A deep sense of gratitude to Lady Bird Johnson

Near most interstate exits, modest blue signs carry the brand logos of nearby restaurants, gas stations and hotels. The signs alert motorists of those services, but they also serve another function, in that each of those little blue road signs replaces several much larger billboards that otherwise might line the interstate and clutter the view from the highway.

For that, we owe a debt of gratitude to the efforts of Lady Bird Johnson to keep roadside vistas clear and to protect some of the natural beauty of the American landscape. In 1965, Lady Bird opened the first White House Conference on Natural Beauty by remarking that "surely a civilization that can send a man to the moon can also find ways to maintain a clean and pleasant Earth." Lady Bird, who passed away last week, was already involved in efforts to beautify the nation's capital, while President Johnson prepared a broad policy for the rapidly growing federal highway system as part of his Great Society plan. The Johnsons' original vision was of a highway system like a high-speed parkway, offering motorists unobstructed views of pastoral America, free from "billboard blight" and other unsightly areas like automotive junkyards.

A voluntary system had been in place since the 1950s, but only seven states had taken advantage of a federal bonus system to clean up its roadways. Johnson's road bills would effectively eliminate all billboards from federal highways, and that was the subject of debate when the Conference on Natural Beauty convened. Support for beautification was overwhelming, but the conference's most vocal dissenting member, Philip Tocker, then head of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), managed to convince the president to scale back his vision. The OAAA, America's largest outdoor advertising trade organization, representing nearly every major national and regional billboard company, supported a vision that reconfigured the American landscape in terms of scenic and commercial zones: billboards would be regulated according to land use, and only "scenic" areas were to be protected.

The weakened bill cleared the Senate by a 63-14 vote, upon which Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen was said to have sighed, "Goodbye, Burma-Shave," in reference to the long-running, seemingly endless series of road signs for the famous toiletry product. The bill more narrowly passed the House to become the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Billboards would be removed from scenic areas, but allowed near commercial centers, and unsightly businesses like junkyards would be either removed or hidden from roadside view. State compliance would be tied to federal highway funding.

The debate over roadside beauty captured the nation's attention, and spawned some humorous moments. A May 1965 editorial cartoon featured two ad men speaking before a line of billboards: "We've got a beautification crisis -- behind those billboards is an automobile graveyard." Lady Bird's visibility and influence in the beautification debate was widely recognized, by supporters and opposition alike: in Great Falls, Mont., the Lopuch & Hanson Sign Company briefly erected a billboard that read "Impeach Lady Bird."

Beyond environmental and aesthetic concerns, highway beautification, led by Lady Bird, was widely acknowledged as a triumph for community activism largely undertaken and organized by women. At the start of the Conference on Natural Beauty, President Johnson remarked that it was up to the women to make it work; that while men tended to go home and talk about things, women would not give up; that women would take their fight to every town hall and county courthouse and get things done. In 1969, the Keep America Beautiful organization established a Lady Bird Johnson Award to recognize the accomplishments of women working to beautify America.

At the opening of a rest stop on I-95 in Virginia, Lady Bird said: "No one can drive this scenic highway without feeling a deep sense of gratitude for such lush, green land and a rush of pride in man's determination to keep it within eyesight of the motorist." Since then, attitudes have shifted and regulations on highway signs have relaxed, with massive signs towering in the distance, visible for miles. However, there are still long stretches of Interstate, lined with trees or winding through pastoral and natural landscapes, where the only signs are those little blue ones that tell us where we can find gas, food or lodging. For those, we still owe a "deep sense of gratitude" to Lady Bird Johnson.