Colorado living: About those welcoming signs
This welcoming sign stands alongside westbound I-70 in the eastern plains where the highway departs Kansas and enters Colorado.
Travelers driving into Colorado are greeted at the borders by the state’s signature “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” signs. These large wooden signs have welcomed visitors to the state for more than 60 years and have been featured in countless vacation photos.
Since the 1950s, the rustic signs have offered their good, old-fashioned hospitality. The signs are handmade by the in-house sign shop of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and it takes about two weeks to make one. With proper maintenance, the signs last seven to 10 years.
Using locally sourced wood, the CDOT shop team cuts the boards to size, glues them together, and threads them with vertical metal rods, which allow for tightening as the wood shrinks over time in our dry climate. The team uses a routing machine to carve the words, then stains the sign. The signs are painted by hand, with glass beads sprinkled in, to make the sign reflective.
Over the years, there have been some attempts to change the signs. In 1990, the Department of Highways (now CDOT) replaced the simple, rustic signs with metal signs with a different, more colorful design that read “Welcome to Colorado: Mountains and Much More.” The new signs were not well received; therefore, the old signs were reinstalled by 1998. Another effort in 2005 to replace the signs with modern signage made of fabricated stone generated a lot of complaints to CDOT, and so the signs have remained in their historic design and construction.
There are currently 41 of these welcoming signs outlining the state. Images of these iconic signs can be found on all sorts of items for souvenir collectors, ranging from keychains to wall art to ornaments, and even underwear.
For more information about the signs and sign shop, visit codot.gov and search “colorful.”
Do you have a photo of yourself with one of the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” signs? For a chance to win a gift card and have your photo featured in an upcoming issue of The Connection, email a copy of the photo with your name and the photo’s date and location to editor@castlepinesconnection.com.
By Susan Helton; photo by Terri Wiebold
