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Marion Fuller Brown, now 90, led the battle against billboards in Maine, one of four states to ban them.

By ANN S. KIM, Staff Writer July 29, 2007

There was a time in Maine, not so long ago, when motorists on the state's highways would be greeted by billboards for motels, insurance brokers, car dealerships, cigarettes and more. Such scenes are a memory now, thanks to a billboard ban that was signed into law 30 years ago this month.

The absence of the billboards, which are so common in other states, is widely accepted by Mainers today. Fans of the ban say the results -- natural landscapes uncluttered by the roadside obstructions -- are priceless.

"It's become part of our quality of place," said Dana Connors, president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. Connors was the state transportation commissioner when the last sign acquired by the state -- a double-sided billboard advertising Holiday Inns in Portland and the Shawmut Motor Inn in Kennebunkport -- was toppled on Route 1 in Arundel.

Maine, Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska are the only four states that ban billboards. It's unlikely that other states will follow suit, said Kevin Fry, president of Scenic America, a national anti-billboard group.

"The state legislatures have been completely captured by the billboard industry," he said.

According to Fry, there are more billboards on highways these days than when the 1965 Federal Highway Beautification Act was passed. When Lady Bird Johnson was pushing for the federal law, there were 350,000 billboards in the country, compared with today's estimated 450,000, a figure that does not include those in the cities, he said.

There is a battle going on around the country for the public realm, Fry said. Outside of Maine, there are advertisements on digital billboards and wraps that cover buildings. In Florida, Fry said, a law designates a 500-foot view zone for each face of a billboard and requires obscuring trees to be cut.

"You have no idea in Maine how lucky you are that you've protected yourselves," he said.

The impact of the Maine law was not immediate. Although Gov. James Longley signed the Maine Travelers Information Act in 1977, court challenges delayed the law's implementation for two years.

Over the next five years, 8,500 billboards were removed at a cost of $4.7 million, most of which came from federal funds.

In Maine, the anti-billboard campaign was championed by Marion Fuller Brown of York. As a lawmaker, she sponsored legislation prohibiting new construction of billboards within a certain distance of highways and primary roads. Longley later asked her to lead the push for a stronger law, an effort that led to the success of the 1977 bill.

Brown, now 90, recalled how the billboard industry's lobbyists tried to derail the bill. The effort also had to contend with the fact that many farms earned money by allowing the billboard companies to erect signs on their property.

"You had to have a big fight," said Brown, who also founded Scenic America.

The law meant that off-premise billboards -- those that are not actually on the property of the advertising business -- made way for the small "official business directional signs."

Those are the common, rectangular signs with the business name, the distance to the location and an arrow pointing which way to go. The signs are allowed only in spots where the traveler has to change direction to reach the destination.

Brown said that the majority of billboards in Maine advertised large national companies and products like cigarettes and liquor.

But Carolyn Dobson, a former owner of the Desert of Maine in Freeport, said the ban was bad for local businesses.

"If you speak to any small business person who's not on Route 1, they'll tell you it was the worst disaster they encountered," said Dobson, who with her husband, Sid, owned the attraction from 1984 to 2004.

The Desert of Maine used to have distinctive billboards with the image of a camel in York County and Freeport.

The signs, which were erected on barn roofs, were also banned as...