On the watch for Fallen Rock

Sunday, 26 September 2010 00:00

September 25, 1929. "The British Columbia government has declared an unrelenting war on outdoor advertising along the provincial highways," Canadian Press reports. Offending billboards are to be removed during the following weeks. Exceptions will include highway information signs and others deemed to have a definite public value by travellers with useful information. Existing motel, hotel and resort signs will be allowed to stay.

One enterprising motel owner will make unique use of the exemptions.

"We don't want to be hard on the people who have spent money on advertising, but we place first consideration on the beauty of the province's scenery, and we believe that the public has a right to enjoy that scenery without having it defaced but a lot of unsightly advertising matter," Public Works Minister Nels Lougheed declared.

The billboard ban is part of an effort to provide a uniform system of scenic protection along the Pacific highways from British Columbia to Mexico.

One of the government's highway information signs that remain warns drivers of the danger of rocks that fall on the highway from steep mountain sides throughout much of the province's most spectacular regions. Watch for fallen rock, warning the signs. At the end of a series of such signs, a commercial sign informed drivers they had found what they had been watching for, the Fallen Rock Motel. A recent web search found no indication that British Columbia's Fallen Rock motel still exists, but Ontario has a Fall Rock motel on the Trans-Canada highway at Schreiber, east of Thunder Bay and the head of Lake Superior.