An Epic State-by-State Look at Municipality Border Signs
Each state has its own approach to this type of sign. Here’s a rundown, along with commentary, analysis, and background info.
In last week’s article about driving in Wisconsin, I mentioned that the signs you’ll see when entering a Badger State city or town will list the municipality’s population. That prompted several readers to note that some other states list a town’s elevation above sea level, or show the town’s founding date, or include some state-specific phrasing.
That gave me an idea: Why not show the municipality sign formats for all 50 states? The result is this article, which offers a state-by-state rundown of these types of signs. It turned out to be a bigger task than I initially envisioned (that probably says more about my lack of foresight than it does about the size of the task), but I’m happy to say I learned a lot of really interesting stuff while putting this compendium together, and I think you’ll probably learn a lot from reading it!
Before we get started, a few ground rules and caveats:
You know those decorative “Welcome to” signs that are typically produced by the local chamber of commerce, or the city council, or the Lions Club? You won’t see any of those in this article. The only thing we’re concerned with here are official, standardized signs issued by a state’s department of transportation.
Although I’ve traveled in all 50 states, there are some that I haven’t visited in more than 20 years, so this article is primarily the product of internet research, not on-site reporting. I scoured various photo archives, consulted the online versions of state highway sign style guides, and in a few instances contacted a state’s department of transportation to confirm or clarify things. Despite all of that, there are probably a few things I missed, misconstrued, or just got wrong. If so, feel free to post corrections in the comments.
I tried to use up-to-date photos, but in some cases a sign I included may show a population figure that’s no longer current — sorry about that.
Also: While almost all of the signs I’m about to show you use some version of the typeface Highway Gothic, you may notice a few intra-state inconsistencies regarding the use of capital and lowercase letters. In the Michigan section, for example, I showed these two signs to demonstrate how the state uses both “City Limit” and “Village Limit” on its signage, depending on the municipality’s governing structure:
As you can see, “Perry” has an initial cap, while “Bancroft” is all-caps. The initial cap is the modern standard, and most of the country is changing over to that format — the Bancroft sign just hasn’t been updated yet. So for the purposes of this article, I didn’t consider this type of inconsistency to be notable or worth mentioning.
Okay, enough preliminaries! Here’s the state-by-state rundown. For many states, I added some commentary or background info; for others, I let the signs speak for themselves. Enjoy!
Alabama
Alaska
Yes, Alaska really has a town called North Pole (although it’s a bit of a misnomer, because the town is actually located below the Arctic Circle). In any case, the “City Limits” format is used throughout the state, although at least one municipality uses “Townsite Limit”:
Arizona
Arizona is the only state whose signs list a town’s elevation and founding date. Also, it’s nice to see “Elevation” spelled out instead of abbreviated.
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Note that while other states list the elevation in strictly numerical terms, Colorado adds “FT,” just in case anyone was unsure about which unit of measurement was being applied.
Connecticut
Connecticut signs show the municipality’s incorporation date and the words “Town Line.” But a town can also have “Incorporated” replaced by “Settled”:
Some Connecticut municipalities show the town’s name inside a Connecticut-shaped outline:
I’ve asked the state’s transportation department about these signs but haven’t yet received a response. I’ll update this post if I hear back from them.
Update: I have now heard back from the Connecticut DOT, as follows:
Our traffic engineers say they aren’t very familiar with the history of [the state-outline signs] but also don’t recall this layout as an option over the past two decades. They tell me all of these would be quite old at this point and perhaps they are an older design. They did mention that most of these aren’t actually posted at the town lines — they’re usually more near the “town center.”