34 Nebraskaland • August-September 2023
e take for granted that roads will be marked to show
directions and hazards. That wasn't always the case.
Early highways were more of a do-it-yourself aff air
for private groups and local communities.
Private organizations began promoting "automobile
trails" in the 1910s and '20s. A group would navigate a cross-
country route along local farm roads and then promote this
dirt-road path as a "highway." Local communities eager to
attract motorists then marked the route with improvised
signage. Painting colorful stripes on telephone poles was a
popular way to do it.
The raspy "awooga" of a Klaxon auto horn is rarely heard
today, but a century ago, it was part of a national advertising
campaign that changed automobile travel. At the time,
car horns were not
standard equipment,
and highways were
full of unmarked
hazards.
Starting in 1913,
the manufacture
of Klaxon horns began giving 18" x 24" wooden signs to
automobile clubs — such as the one below from Burt County,
Nebraska. Club members placed the signs at dangerous spots.
The Klaxon campaign was not only clever advertising, but
it also helped raise expectations that roadside directions and
hazards would be prominently marked. In time, it made more
sense to devise a publicly funded, standardized system of
road signage. Highway advertising was then left to billboards
and Burma-Shave signs.
Here are a few examples of how Nebraska's road signage
developed over the fi rst half-century of automobile travel.
N
Visit History Nebraska's website at history.nebraska.gov.
W
Early Road
Signs
Lincoln Highway marker at Gothenburg, 1919.
HISTORY NEBRASKA, RG3341-3-20-21
AWOOGA! HISTORY NEBRASKA, 11744-52
Some 3,000 concrete markers
were erected along the Lincoln
Highway in 1928. This one is now
at the Nebraska History Museum
in Lincoln, but others survive here
and there along the route.
HISTORY NEBRASKA, 11920-1
By David L. Bristow,
History Nebraska
