Land Owners Agreeing to Take Down Signs to Beautify Highway, April 2, 1925

Take Down Signs, Say Land Owners. . . They are Actively Cooperating in Movement to Beautify Highway. . . Durham Clubwomen Aid

The owners of land along the Chapel Hill-Durham highway are showing a keen interest in the plan to beautify the highway by the removal of advertising signs and are giving active aid to the improvement.

Jack Sparrow, who holds land on both sides of the road near the one-mile bridge, has told the joint committee of the Community club and the Daughters of the Confederacy that they may clear all of his land of signs. One big board, however, on the right hand side as one goes to Durham, will remain a little while until the owner can get it out of the way. Mr. Sparrow leased the space for this to a merchant but will not renew the lease.

All the owners out to the Durham county line have agreed to have the signs removed from their land, and in a few days they are going to have a meeting at the home of Mrs. Charles Martindale to talk over plans for planting trees.

The Daughters of the Confederacy and the Community Club have offered a prize of $10 to the owner who makes the greatest improvement in the appearance of roadside land, in the Orange county stretch, in the next year. The civics department of the Woman’s Club of Durham has offered a prize of $25 for the greatest improvement along the eight miles of the highway in Durham county. Many of the owners of land in Durham county have already made known their purpose to remove signs from their property.

The Chapel Hill committee that is in charge of the beautification movement is composed of Mrs. Bernard, Mrs. Booker, and Mrs. Coker for the U.D.C., and Mrs. Mangum and Mrs. Dey for the Community Club.

The Boy Scouts are to meet this week, and it will be proposed to them that they go out along the road and take down signs where the removal has been authorized by the land owners. Therefore it may be that the boys will be seen engaged in this enterprise within the next few days.

News came to Mrs. Bernard this week that the largest signboard along the road, the one at the junction of the state highway and the Durham county concrete road, about three miles this side of Durham, was to be ordered down by the State Highway Commission. This is because the sign obscures the view of one of these roads from the other and hence constitutes a danger to travelers.

From the front page of the Chapel Hill Weekly, Thursday, April 2, 1925

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