Your Favorite State Route Sheild?

[Henry]

The CA miner's spade is my all-time favorite, hands down.

[hbelkins]

Also, I apologize for having a rather strange question, but my severely mentally ill mind will not leave me alone about it.

I voted for the Florida state route shield. I highly like all of the usual favorites, such as California, Kansas, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. However, when it comes to states I have actually been to and seen the shields in person, probably my very favorites are Florida and Colorado. I honestly don't see why states like Mississippi or Kentucky couldn't decide on something more inventive.

Does the bolded part of what I said come off as being harsh?

Harsh to who, the state DOTs? It's fortunately exceedingly hard to hurt a government agency's feelings. The only one that's more or less guaranteed to see your post is Kentucky's, and the guy reading it, being a roadgeek, might even agree with you.

Yeah, I find the circle to be bland and unimaginative and not reflective of Kentucky at all.

But as I've said many times, if I had any Photoshop skills, I could take that round Kentucky marker and turn it into something that's uniquely Kentucky and would definitely stand out.

[empirestate]

I'm really, really sorry for bumping this thread, but I have come across something very interesting. I've been browsing the AARoads Shield Gallery a lot this week, and I found some things regarding state route shields (which many of you may already know about).

Just as a tangential musing...remember when there was no such thing as a web site with pictures of highway shields from each state? And there was no book in the library about it, either; it simply wasn't an important enough topic to write a whole book about.

No, we had to personally visit each new state and find out first-hand what the highway markers looked like. And every time I did that, I'd draw the shape of the marker around the corresponding page number in my road atlas. That was my shield gallery. 

[slorydn1]

I'm really, really sorry for bumping this thread, but I have come across something very interesting. I've been browsing the AARoads Shield Gallery a lot this week, and I found some things regarding state route shields (which many of you may already know about).

Just as a tangential musing...remember when there was no such thing as a web site with pictures of highway shields from each state? And there was no book in the library about it, either; it simply wasn't an important enough topic to write a whole book about.

No, we had to personally visit each new state and find out first-hand what the highway markers looked like. And every time I did that, I'd draw the shape of the marker around the corresponding page number in my road atlas. That was my shield gallery. 

Wow, I honestly thought I was the only person in the world who did that! My Ohio and Florida shields looked like crap though, lol.

[jwolfer]

I'm really, really sorry for bumping this thread, but I have come across something very interesting. I've been browsing the AARoads Shield Gallery a lot this week, and I found some things regarding state route shields (which many of you may already know about).

Just as a tangential musing...remember when there was no such thing as a web site with pictures of highway shields from each state? And there was no book in the library about it, either; it simply wasn't an important enough topic to write a whole book about.

No, we had to personally visit each new state and find out first-hand what the highway markers looked like. And every time I did that, I'd draw the shape of the marker around the corresponding page number in my road atlas. That was my shield gallery. 

I remember when I was a kid our old encyclopedia set.. for y'all young 'uns that was the Stone age internet... Sets of books with articles.. the articles for the states had a picture of the state highway shield.

I liked the maps of the states... Counties were easily differentiated

Z981

[adventurernumber1]

Also, I apologize for having a rather strange question, but my severely mentally ill mind will not leave me alone about it.

I voted for the Florida state route shield. I highly like all of the usual favorites, such as California, Kansas, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. However, when it comes to states I have actually been to and seen the shields in person, probably my very favorites are Florida and Colorado. I honestly don't see why states like Mississippi or Kentucky couldn't decide on something more inventive.

Does the bolded part of what I said come off as being harsh?

Harsh to who, the state DOTs? It's fortunately exceedingly hard to hurt a government agency's feelings. The only one that's more or less guaranteed to see your post is Kentucky's, and the guy reading it, being a roadgeek, might even agree with you.

Yeah, I find the circle to be bland and unimaginative and not reflective of Kentucky at all.

But as I've said many times, if I had any Photoshop skills, I could take that round Kentucky marker and turn it into something that's uniquely Kentucky and would definitely stand out.

Thank you very much, Scott and hbelkins. That makes me feel a lot better, and it exposes the flaws of my mind when it tries to berate me about things.

If it is ever possible, hbelkins, I would in fact love to see what you could turn the Kentucky State Highway Shield design into!!     

I'm really, really sorry for bumping this thread, but I have come across something very interesting. I've been browsing the AARoads Shield Gallery a lot this week, and I found some things regarding state route shields (which many of you may already know about).

Just as a tangential musing...remember when there was no such thing as a web site with pictures of highway shields from each state? And there was no book in the library about it, either; it simply wasn't an important enough topic to write a whole book about.

No, we had to personally visit each new state and find out first-hand what the highway markers looked like. And every time I did that, I'd draw the shape of the marker around the corresponding page number in my road atlas. That was my shield gallery. 

Ah, yes, the good old times! 

The AARoads Shield Gallery and other things are indeed a wonderful luxury of the modern day. 

Also, that sounds incredibly cool that you drew the corresponding state route shield over the page numbers in your road atlas!! 

[empirestate]

I'm really, really sorry for bumping this thread, but I have come across something very interesting. I've been browsing the AARoads Shield Gallery a lot this week, and I found some things regarding state route shields (which many of you may already know about).

Just as a tangential musing...remember when there was no such thing as a web site with pictures of highway shields from each state? And there was no book in the library about it, either; it simply wasn't an important enough topic to write a whole book about.

No, we had to personally visit each new state and find out first-hand what the highway markers looked like. And every time I did that, I'd draw the shape of the marker around the corresponding page number in my road atlas. That was my shield gallery. 

Wow, I honestly thought I was the only person in the world who did that! My Ohio and Florida shields looked like crap though, lol.

Most of us thought we were the only people in the world who did any of this!

My personal entry into the road scholar's world was discovering James Lin's website with pictures of each state's highway shield. It's still up: http://www.routemarkers.com/usa/ (although it used to have a user page URL within UC Berkely, if I recall correctly).

[mgk920]

I also really like my home state's state highway shield.  Very distinctive and it screams 'WISCONSIN!'.  It is similar in that regard to Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

The only flaw in an otherwise excellent design for Minnesota is its color scheme - during my first couple of trips into the state when I was much younger I kept mistaking them for 'interstate' shields on overhead BGSes.

I also really like California and Michigan.  I'll give honorable mentions to Maryland and Tennessee (primary) for their state name usage, too.

Also, and although it is not a state route sign, Wisconsin's county shields are light years better than the MUTCD pentagons.  IMHO, the pentagons are so over the top 'busy' and the numbers/letters on them are so small and lost in the flotsam that I consider them to be borderline unreadable at speed.  Remember - 'KISS'!

In addition, a year or so ago I saw an image where Massachusetts used an adaptation of a Wisconsin county sign as an experiment(?) for a potential new state route sign - the exact same graphic proportions, fonts and type sizes, except that they had 'MA' where the word 'COUNTY' goes and numbers instead of letters for the route.  It looked interesting.

Mike

[paulthemapguy]

^Wisconsin's is pretty nice.  It definitely speaks to the state's specific character...being a cheese triangle and all.

My top five route markers are Minnesota, Colorado, Idaho, California, Kansas.
6-10 would probably include Wisconsin, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, and New York.