(HOST) This year’s fall colors have reminded commentator Tom Slayton of Lady Bird Johnson and the political struggle over roadside aesthetics.
(SLAYTON) The tour buses are back – in numbers. There are so many of them in Montpelier this week that they clog State Street, unloading their dozens, scores, hundreds of camera-toting tourists. It’s foliage season again.
Actually, it’s not just foliage season, it’s scenery season, landscape season. The busloads of tourists come in the fall for bright red and orange leaves. But they come back for the beauty of our countryside.
Vermont is blessed in the beauty of its landscape, to be sure. But it’s easy to forget that there was a time, not too terribly long ago, when that landscape was blighted with scads of billboards. And it took a huge legislative battle to get rid of them and prevent their ruining Vermont’s unique – and economically valuable – scenic beauty.
It was in the late 1960s when a young legislator named Ted Riehle introduced a bill to ban off-premise signs throughout the state. In their place he proposed a state-run system of informational travel signs. Opposition was quick and fierce. Lobbyists appeared out of the State House woodwork to warn that banning billboards would mean the end of free enterprise in general and Vermont’s lucrative tourist business in particular.
This was before the completion of the Interstate system in Vermont, and the environmental movement had hardly begun. The idea seemed completely strange and new.
But, contrary to conventional wisdom, Vermont has long been a place where new ideas get serious consideration. And, amazingly enough, Ted Riehle’s bill passed, and a statewide ban on billboards was enacted.
You can see the difference in Vermont’s countryside today. And so can the thousands of tourists who come here to visit, view – and spend money.
I was reminded of the good sense that Vermont’s billboard law makes by a story that appeared in the New York Times earlier this year. It was recalling legislation that came to be known as "Lady Bird Johnson’s Bill" – the federal Highway Beautification Act of 1965.
However, that bill was weakened by compromises forced by the billboard lobby. It had just enough loopholes to allow further billboard proliferation. And they have proliferated – today almost half a million billboards line America’s highways.
Lady Bird’s vision – of a nation with highways lined with flowers and trees and beautiful scenery – is in tatters, the article by journalist Lawrence Wright declared. Urban billboards now are not only lighted, but often are computer-animated, and they are now far larger than they were 40 years ago. Most national highways are much uglier than they were then.
Granted, there are aso many places where the great natural beauty of this country remains unblemished. And there are parts of Vermont where suburban roadside sprawl has blighted our landscape.
But Vermont remains one of only four states that have banned billboards entirely. And, because of that, much of our state remains unblighted and beautiful, and the tourists continue to come. The wisdom – both aesthetic and economic – of Vermont’s decision some 40 years ago becomes more obvious every year.
Tom Slayton is editor-emeritus of Vermont Life magazine.