Snake pit and the two-headed horned toad, five miles ahead—closed until further notice. Hand-painted marquees promoting the roadside attractions of yesteryear were long ago replaced by the modern commercial billboard for the likes of McDonald's, Apple, and Geico. Though $10 billion is spent annually on "out of home" advertising, billboards have been in steady decline since the Depression. One reason is because digital advertising continues to saturate cell phones; another is a federal law passed in 1965 designed to ditch the kitsch from the American Interstate Highway System: the Highway Beautification Act.

Commonly known as Lady Bird’s Bill, the Highway Beautification Act was legislation designed to enforce an earlier bill, the voluntary Bonus Act of 1958. In general, the Beautification Act continued the requirements of the Bonus Act to provided incentive to control the distance of outdoor advertising to the Interstate Highways within 660 feet from the edge of the Interstate, to limit billboards and junkyards to areas zoned by the states as industrial and pay just compensation for removal of non-compliant billboards and junkyards. Incentives were also awarded for beautification efforts like planting trees and flowers along the roadside. States which had volunteered for the Bonus program had receive a bonus of one-half of one percent of the Federal Highway construction costs. However, the Bonus Act would expire in June 1965.

Then-First Lady Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson had taken on the project of assuring the Beautification Act would pass. On October 7, 1965, Johnson sat in the walnut-trimmed upper gallery of the House Chamber and listened to final arguments for and against the Highway Beautification Act, PL 89-285.

Mrs. Johnson understood the bill would affect small-town business revenue and impact the bottom line for a powerful political ally for many in Congress, The Outdoor Advertising Association of American (OAAA). But times were changing, and the mess left behind by the progress of the past demanded to be cleaned up for the future.

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