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The freshened billboard is along I-24 at South Pittsburg, Tennessee.
Rock City is repainting more than the classic “See Rock City” barns that have advertised the Lookout Mountain attraction in Georgia so famously since the mid-20th century. This past summer, a birdhouse billboard—visible from I-24—was repainted at South Pittsburg, Tennessee.
“It is a sign that looks like a birdhouse,” says Bill Chapin, chairman and CEO of See Rock City, Inc.
Rock City’s founder, Garnet Carter, hired a self-taught painter, Clark Byers, in the 1930s to paint the phrase “See Rock City” on barn rooftops across the country. Two decades and over 900 barns later, Byers began building birdhouses that were miniature “See Rock City” barns. Thousands of birdhouses have since been sold. And some have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
Made to look like a three-dimensional structure, the repainted birdhouse sign on I-24, standing 65 feet high and 25 feet wide, has been leased by See Rock City, Inc., since 1972.
“When you see this birdhouse a half a mile away, it looks like it’s out in the forest taking care of giant birds,” says Chapin, 65. “It’s so far away that it looks like a birdhouse. It really does not look like a sign.”
The story above appears in our January/February 2020 issue.
