Earliest "modern" BGS

[Mergingtraffic]

When were the earliest "modern" BGSs start to appear?


I'm talking panel or extruded aluminum type signs with green and white lettering (photo example above).....(not the NJ Tpke type signage.)

and are any of the earliest ones still around?

[Alps]

mid-1950s, California, yes.

[J N Winkler]

It can't have been California if we include all the features Doofy103 specifies (including white-on-green lettering), because the changeover from white-on-black to white-on-green did not occur until after the AASHO Interstate signing manual was issued in 1958.

Oklahoma was using white-on-green signs on the Turner Turnpike in 1954 and the Kansas Turnpike followed this example in 1956, but if we are going to exclude early turnpike signing on the basis that it does not match the format of modern Interstate guide signs, I'd have to go with the experimental signs in Greenbelt, Maryland.

[Pete from Boston]

The Greenbelt ones on a test track?  Is that really in the spirit of the question?

[jakeroot]

I assume that maybe the first interstate had the earliest "modern" signs? Then again, I haven't a clue where the first interstate was. Missouri?

[NE2]

I assume that maybe the first interstate had the earliest "modern" signs? Then again, I haven't a clue where the first interstate was. Missouri?

The Interstate system didn't come with its own branding. States just used existing sign standards.

I bet most people here (myself included) wouldn't know the difference between "panel or extruded aluminum type signs" and other large guide signs.

[PHLBOS]

For MA, I would say sometime during the mid-60s.  The original porcelan BGS' (w/mixed-case, button-copy lettering) along the Boston Extension of the Mass Pike (I-90) were probably one of the first if not the first modern-styled BGS' in the Bay State.

Other free highways in MA started getting them (that included route shields in MUTCD layouts) during the late 60s.

[Zeffy]

I'm talking panel or extruded aluminum type signs with green and white lettering (photo example above).....(not the NJ Tpke type signage.)

But aren't those what everyone calls BGS anyway?

[J N Winkler]

I assume that maybe the first interstate had the earliest "modern" signs? Then again, I haven't a clue where the first interstate was. Missouri?

The Interstate system didn't come with its own branding. States just used existing sign standards.

Kansas also has a claim to priority (I-70 just west of Topeka in 1956).  But actually an Interstate, built as an Interstate rather than as something else and subsequently added to the system (as with many of the earlier turnpikes), would not have had Interstate signs (except possibly as prototypes) until AASHO released the Interstate signing manual in 1958.

Plus it was not always the norm to erect final signing at the time an Interstate was first opened.  In many states, Interstate surfacing contracts included temporary signing (usual colors, but letters one size smaller and so on) which was left in place until a considerable length of new road had opened and a final signing contract was let to swap out all the temporary signing and erect structures and panels for the full-size permanent signing.  Arizona and Ohio are two examples of states which did this routinely.

The real expert on this aspect of early Interstate signing was Randy Hersh, who was tracking signs long before the Interstate system reached substantial completion and saw these swapouts in progress while travelling across the US by bus to explore the network as it developed.  He was also collecting signing plans when in college (he dropped out of Ohio State after two years), and got some stick from his roommates when he ordered a set of 22" x 34" plans for a major signing contract from the Texas highway department.

I bet most people here (myself included) wouldn't know the difference between "panel or extruded aluminum type signs" and other large guide signs.

I didn't see any value in getting hung up on definitions of substrate type.  Doofy103 didn't mention, for example, Douglas A-10 honeycomb laminate, which is still the basis of some large signs in California and Pennsylvania.  But his criteria (large panels, white on green as primary color combination, no "turnpike style") seem to exclude pretty much everything that came before the Interstate signing manual that I am aware of.  California had mixed-case by 1950, but only in white on black; the NYS Thruway had mixed-case by 1954, but only in white on blue and not with a modern layout; turnpikes in Kansas and Oklahoma had white on green by 1954 (1956 in Kansas), but only in all-uppercase; the Chicago expressways had large panel signs by the early 1950's (color indeterminate) but with all-uppercase legend; and so on.

Besides the experimental signs in Greenbelt, which were confected for the "popularity contest" study that resulted in white on green being chosen for Interstates, some photos in Traffic Engineering lead me to believe that a few states, like Ohio and New York, may have prototyped layouts that were eventually shown in the 1958 manual.  There was, for example, a real live sign that actually said "Metropolis" and "Utopia" under a US 20 shield.  Despite those two names sounding like archetypal placeholder destinations, I am not completely convinced this was just a test-track sign because I vaguely recall that New York does have an obscure village named Utopia.

[cpzilliacus]

When were the earliest "modern" BGSs start to appear?


I'm talking panel or extruded aluminum type signs with green and white lettering (photo example above).....(not the NJ Tpke type signage.)

and are any of the earliest ones still around?

The panels in the Facebook directory below are from the time that the Capital Beltway opened - they are many years older than the BGS panel above, though at the time Maryland SRC did not spec extruded BGS panels.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10203354853424196.1073741843.1596953667&type=1&l=fbc3fcfc56