JAcKSON HOLE, WYO – Wyoming is getting a whole new look.
Travelers probably will never notice but the state’s welcome signs are all being swapped out for updated ones. Travelers to Wyoming will now be greeted by signs depicting Lower Green River Lake and Squaretop Mountain, as the identical image appears on vehicle license plates.
WTDOT makes the new signs in-house at their sign shop. The highly reflective signs were recently finished up and crews began installing them “anywhere a state highway meets a state line,” WYDOT District 3 spokesperson Stephanie Harsha said. They hope to have all welcome signs in Wyoming updated by the end of the month.
In D3, which includes most of southwest Wyoming, there are 12 total signs to be switched out. In the Jackson area, two signs will be replaced in the next week or so—one on Teton Pass at the Idaho-Wyoming border and one in Alpine at the Idaho-Wyoming border.
The interstate signs—for I-80, I-25, and I-90—are twice the size of state highway signs. The interstate welcome signs measure out at 8-feet high and 16-feet wide; the other signs are half those dimensions.
Harsha confirmed that the signs are changed out every eight years to parallel the license plate design, which is revised along the same timeframe.
What happens to the old signs? Harsha said the highway department recycles what it can of them and simply disposes of the rest, though she recognized the sentimental or souvenir value of them. “A few have disappeared from storage areas already,” she said.
Hmm, maybe the state should action them off.
