William Marvel: Peddling Conway

Interminable billboards lined the road to Florida in the 1960s — most memorably, those touting an astonishingly cheap and unattractive tourist trap called South of the Border. Removing and prohibiting such scenery-blocking billboards became a cause célèbre for Lady Bird Johnson soon after she became First Lady.

During her nationwide campaign, a photograph taken from the top of Bowling Alley Hill, in Conway, became emblematic of the commercial uglification of the American landscape. A motorist descending that hill, who might otherwise have glanced ahead at Mount Washington and the majestic range it dominates, was instead confronted with a veritable wall of billboards for some of the cheesier attractions that lay ahead. The first and most imposing of them urged travelers who had nothing better to do to stop at 6000 Salad Bowls, behind Bud Rowell's gas station in North Conway.