Forty-one “Welcome to Wyoming” signs greet drivers on highways and interstates across the state. They’re routinely replaced and redesigned, and a batch of recently retired signs are now up for public auction.
The iconic signs typically change over every eight years, following the same cycle that’s mandated for state license plates. Both got an update this year, but Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) Public Affairs Officer Doug McGee said the new signs have their own unique look this time around.
“ It did occur to us this year that with sign materials improving over time, that maybe we could make them last a little longer or really just have a little more freedom to change them,” he said.
The new signs started going up this fall and feature five colorful landscapes from the four corners and center of the state: Grand Teton National Park, Devils Tower National Monument, Medicine Bow Peak, Devil's Gate and Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
McGee said it’s common for travelers to stop by the signs and take a photo, so much so that the agency partnered with the state Department of Tourism to come up with the new design.
“ We want to help highlight pride in our state and invite people to come here,” he said. “Tourism is one of the top three industries in the state. We recognize that it's very important to the state's economy and we want to play our part there.”
The signs occasionally have to be replaced outside of their usual replacement cycle if they’re excessively vandalized. McGee says that happens more often to the 36 highway signs rather than the five interstate signs.
“ Interstate signs generally last quite a long time because there is so much traffic, there’s usually a community nearby, plus they're pretty large and unwieldy,” he said. “But on two-lane roads that are not really busy, they can often get shot at. People like to use them for target practice.”
The signs are also a hotspot for stickers. McGee said they’re designed with some space on the bottom to act as a bit of a buffer, but the stickers can start to pile up on signs in more heavily-trafficked locations.
“The stickers start to encroach more and more on the sign,” said McGee. “Then we’ll reach a point where we say, ‘Well, the reflectivity is all gone because it's covered up with stickers. You can't really read the welcome message,’ so then we'll replace it.”
WYDOT first tried auctioning old signs off the last time the design changed in 2017. That year, it sold five signs, one from each district in the state, and made $33,000.
The agency has auctioned off 11 signs so far this year, netting over $70,000 with a batch in January and a batch in February. Those funds go to road repair.
“Certainly a lot of folks want them for their shop or their man cave, so to speak, and pubs, bars and grills,” said McGee. “[The signs] are a great fit for that, especially if you have a little Wyoming flavor on there. So a couple of bullet holes and a few stickers, but not too many.”
Six more four-by-eight foot highway welcome signs are currently up for grabs, along with an unmounted eight-by-sixteen foot interstate sign of reflective sheeting that McGee described as a “giant sticker.” The highest bid for one of the signs was $2,550, as of the afternoon of Mar. 31.
The signs are listed on Public Surplus, which is a website used by many state departments around the country to sell used equipment that they can no longer use or no longer need. That’s where WYDOT also auctions off their retired snow plows, vehicles and even computers and file cabinets.
“ The appropriate thing to do with surplus state-owned property is to make it available to anyone, so basically to the highest bidder, so that everyone has a chance to get this stuff instead of selectively picking people to buy it,” said McGee.
The auction for the “Welcome to Wyoming” signs will close on April 8.
