Chehalis, WA

It’s been more than 50 years since that Uncle Sam billboard along Interstate 5 in Lewis County went up to enrage or perhaps just amuse at least some in the vast streams of motorists who’ve viewed it maybe 1.3 billion times.

Some may not think of the billboard exactly as a tourist landmark. But it is one of this state’s best-known sights, with its usually right-wingish ALL-CAP messages alongside a big cutout image of Uncle Sam in red, white and blue.

The first news story about the billboard ran on Nov. 24, 1967, in The Chronicle, the newspaper that serves Lewis County, population 76,000.

It showed a photo of the billboard carrying the message, “THERE ARE NO BILLBOARDS IN RUSSIA!”

The caption explained that turkey rancher Alfred Hamilton, “who owns property adjacent to Interstate 5,” had put up the billboard “in apparent protest against a federal-state move to rid sections of interstate highway of billboards.”

Hamilton died in 2004 at age 84.

Sherryl Zurek, 68, of Tujunga, California, one of his five children, says the freeway cutting her dad’s farm in half was something that gnawed at him.