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Duo blazes the way for roads not saddled with signs

Having driven recently to surrounding towns such as Pagosa Springs, Cortez, Monticello and Moab, we were bombarded with ubiquitous roadside signs and billboards. Who can we thank for the relative lack of these in Durango and La Plata County? Was legislation passed to ban them? And why do a few still remain here? – Grateful For The Lack of Eyesores

There are many people responsible for the elimination of roadside clutter and the protection of vistas.

And wouldn’t you know it? The two pivotal figures in local billboard elimination weren’t from Durango. One was a feisty Texas lady. The other was a guy from Arizona.

So how do we honor these champions of scenic preservation?

In the past, champions were given a laurel wreath. Today, congratulations are bestowed with a vigorous clasping of right hands.

Therefore, let us extend a laurel and hardy handshake to Lady Bird Johnson and an itinerant billboard salesman from Arizona.

Admittedly, “a laurel and hardy handshake” is a blatant rip-off of a line from “Blazing Saddles,” the finest Western film ever made.

You really ought to watch “Blazing Saddles” again this summer, if only for the scene when “Mongo” flattens a horse with a right hook to the jaw.

And let’s be honest, there’s the campfire scene.

What’s the connection between “Blazing Saddles” and the nonexistent highway billboards?

In today’s world, you’d never be able to make “Blazing Saddles.”

In the 41 years since the film’s release, many folks have somehow become immune to irony, farce and the comedic genius of having Count Basie play “April In Paris” in the middle of the desert.

Likewise, today you could never pass legislation such as the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Congress can’t pay the bills let alone clean up the roads.

Washington is like the movie’s fictional town of Rock Ridge, of which the gunslinging character “Jim the Waco Kid” muses about its inhabitants: “You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know ... morons.”

You can be sure a class act such as Lady Bird Johnson didn’t utter such epithets, at least not publicly. But she wasn’t happy with the trashing and commercialization of highways.

And so she became the leading advocate of the Highway Beautification Act.

The law intended to protect natural and scenic beauty along federal-aid highways by, among other things, controlling or removing billboards in rural, scenic and agricultural areas.

Her efforts led to many nonconforming billboards being torn down. Local governments were also empowered to limit outdoor advertising.

La Plata County isn’t big on big billboards.

Section 98 of the county’s land-use ordinance offers clear rules about “outdoor advertising,” including size limits and the requirement that any sign must be within 1,000 feet of the business being advertised.

Other municipalities are not so strict. Thus, you will see many more roadside billboards, many of which predate the 1965 beautification act and are grandfathered as long as they are maintained.

So that brings us to the salesman from Arizona who wanted to install billboards on every Durango building facing Camino del Rio and very nearly got away with it.

Greg Hoch, director of planning and community development, tells the story.

In 1981, a fellow from Scottsdale was in town and saw a couple of huge signs on downtown’s numerous flat rooftops.

It was an epiphany of dubious esthetics: Durango allows billboards on buildings! Let’s put them on every roof downtown!

That scheme didn’t sit well with town officials, Hoch said. “It served as the catalyst for an emergency temporary sign code to be enacted while a permanent sign code could be passed.”

And so it goes with a laurel and hardy handshake.

Durango will not rest on its laurels in combating commercial clutter, and no more handshake deals to advance adverse advertising.

Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you relish Madeline Khan’s role in “Blazing Saddles” as Lili von Shtupp, the “Teutonic Titwillow.”



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