Along With the View Comes a Slew of Signs

Perched on the edge of a campground in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks is a small sign intended either to promote safety or provide comic relief. It says: “No Tents Allowed on Roadway.”

The sign is one of well over 6,500 in the twin parks, which may strike some as a bit much for an area where the hand of man is supposed to be largely invisible.

But in most large national parks in the West, signs are deemed to be essential. How else do you prevent people from getting lost in the wilderness or sleeping in the road?

Signs are so important that most Western parks employ at least one sign maker. It is a job that requires creativity, craftsmanship and an economy of words.

“Signs are something you take for granted and don’t really think about until there’s a sign not there and you need it,” says Steve Esson, who has been making signs at Sequoia & Kings Canyon since 1995. “My clients in this park are people on vacation. They’re relaxed. They’re not in a normal state of mind. You have to find a way to get their attention very quickly.”

Although it seems reasonable to think that a finite number of signs are needed in what is essentially wilderness, the demand for new or replacement signs in national parks never slows.

Falling trees, wildfires and floods claim some signs. Others take a beating from salty air at coastal parks, from the pervasive dampness of redwood forests and the intense ultraviolet light found in the Sierra.

Wildlife--particularly birds--also deliver insults on a regular basis. “A grizzly bear can’t walk past a sign without knocking them over. They bite them, swat at them and paw at them,” said Dave Yeats, the sign maker at Glacier National Park in northwest Montana.

People also contribute to the damage.

Snowplows knock over dozens of signs in mountain parks each year, as do inattentive motorists focused on the scenery rather than the road. Vandals claim a few, and thieves swipe them, generally because of their decorative value.

One such sign was in the Muir Hut, an igloo-shaped structure made of rock at the top of 12,000-foot Muir Pass in the Kings Canyon back country. The hut was built in 1930 for backpackers stuck at the top of the pass during lightning storms.

It had a sign banning overnight camping. Weighing only a couple of pounds, it was easy pickings and disappeared every summer.

Esson’s solution was to add some heft. A new sign was constructed of anodized aluminum. It featured the likeness of John Muir and the logo of the Sierra Club, which Muir founded. Esson then bolted the sign into a 60-pound concrete log that was flown by helicopter to the top of the pass. The new sign now sits over the mantel of the hut and hasn’t budged an inch since being installed last year.

In Sequoia & Kings Canyon and other parks, the most arresting signs are the ones installed to protect the environment from people and people from the environment.

Visitors to Western parks will find signs warning them not to chop down trees, feed wildlife, ignite wildfires, take dogs on trails, clean dishes in creeks, litter, pick wildflowers, trample fragile vegetation and take objects from archeological sites.

A novel sign in Alaska’s Denali National Park reads:

“All Arctic Ground Squirrels. Warning. Refuse ALL handouts from humans. They mean well but their food will make you slow and fat ... easy bear bait.”

But most signs in parks warn people of lurking dangers.

At a beach at Point Reyes National Seashore, one sign warns visitors of sneaker waves, riptides, a strong undertow and sharks.

At Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park and California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, boiling mud pots, erupting geysers and other piping hot geothermal features may not look inviting, but park officials leave nothing to chance or common sense. They have posted signs warning people not leap into the roiling, steaming waters.

Likewise, rivers with strong currents, cold waters and slippery rocks have inspired a class of signs warning people of the obvious dangers.

And then there’s the photo phenomenon. Because park visitors often go to dangerous extremes to take pictures, signs have been posted at the top of Yosemite’s waterfalls and the rim of the Grand Canyon warning visitors that landing on rocks after falling a few hundred feet will, indeed, be fatal.

When he isn’t in his workshop building more signs, Esson is doing reconnaissance work, backpacking 150 miles each year, checking on the condition of his handiwork and quizzing hikers he meets on the effectiveness of his signs.

One of Esson’s current projects is redesigning entrance signs for Kings Canyon. The importance of the job is hard to overstate. The design must impart the uniqueness of the landscape visitors are about to enter while subtly assuring them that under the National Park Service’s stewardship, the place is in good hands.

Esson made two small-scale models of the preliminary design. Both were imperfect in ways that can jolt a sign maker awake in the middle of the night. Neither sign featured the parks’ emblematic sequoia tree. Neither incorporated a view of Kings Canyon that was actually within park boundaries.

So, Esson went back to the drawing board. The result is a beautiful sign with a detailed carving of a giant sequoia and granite overlays representing Kings Canyon. He got the idea for the canyon view from a photo he took on a backpacking trip looking west down the park’s Bubbs Creek drainage.

“The park service is in charge of some of the most beautiful areas of the world, and we want signs to look good for them,” Esson said. “Something like this Kings Canyon entrance sign will be there for years. For a few generations, at least, millions of people are going to pull over and take photos standing by that sign with their families.”

Which, Esson believes, is a very good sign.