by Ramona K. Cecil
As a child of the 1950s
and 1960s growing up in the American rural
During my childhood, you
couldn’t travel ten miles in any direction of my home without seeing a handful
of “billboard” barns. The most common of those were the ones promoting Mail
Pouch Tobacco. While I don’t in any way advocate the use of tobacco products, I
must admit, those barn signs always made me smile.
Turns out, there is a
reason the Mail Pouch Tobacco barn signs were so numerous. Most were the
prolific lifework of one man; Harley Warrick. While the Mail Pouch Tobacco
Company first began using barns to advertise their product in the 1890s, the
practice took off in 1925 when the company sent out six men in two-man painting
crews to “barnstorm” the countryside in Ford model T trucks.
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| Original six Mail Pouch Tobacco barn painters |
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| Barn in process of being painted |
I always wondered what barn owners got in exchange for agreeing to have advertisements painted on their buildings. Turns out they were paid very little; $1.00 or $2.00 per year of advertising in the 1930s. The real value was not having to paint the barn themselves and they could pick whatever color they wanted the rest of the barn painted. A pretty good deal, I’d say.
It was in 1946 when one of
these painting crews came to the Ohio
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| Harley Warrick beside his truck |
Another familiar barn sign
you may have noticed while motoring across the county is the one inviting
travelers to see Rock City, Tennessee; a ten-acre natural attraction near
Chattanooga that features massive ancient rock formations, botanical gardens,
and a seven-state panoramic view from Lookout Mountain.
In 1936, Clark Byers had
worked for a cotton mill and bottled buttermilk for $3.00 a week when a Chattanooga advertiser hired him to paint advertisements
for the Rock City Gardens See Rock City , TN ,”
and “See 7 states from Lookout
Mountain Rock City Rock City
Gardens Murfreesboro ,
Tennessee
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| Clark Byers in front of one of the barns he painted |
By the mid 1960s, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 and the new interstate highway system dealt the barn advertising business a fatal one-two punch. The Act deemed the barn signs an eyesore while the interstate highway system lured travelers away from the roads and highways along which, the barn signs could be seen.
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| President Johnson signing Highway Beautification Act of 1965 |
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| Modern interstate highway system |
Ramona K. Cecil is a poet and award-winning author of historical fiction for the Christian market. A proud Hoosier, she often sets her stories in her home state of
