ABSTRACT
From the time she founded the National Roadside Council, Elizabeth Boyd Lawton asked the fundamental question, “Why commercialize the entire countryside?” “Why not keep business where business belongs?”1 As Struthers Burt explained, “Nobody objects to anyone taking a bath in a bathroom, but there would be a great deal of objection if our highways were lined with people taking baths.”2 Legally, the means of keeping everything in its proper place was zoning. By the mid-1920s, Lawton realized that while the law might not be willing to regulate based on aesthetics, the growing application of zoning to cities and towns could serve just as well. Zoning divided building and land use into separate residential, commercial, and industrial districts. It aimed to protect public health, safety, morals, and welfare, and presumably property values. Towns that passed zoning ordinances might bar outdoor advertising from residential neighborhoods, since these areas excluded commercial and industrial uses. Though this worked for cities and towns that employed zoning, could the vast expanses of state and interstate highways that passed through rural areas also be regulated?
