Video: Road Sign Forest at Watson Lake: Canadian Open Air Museum
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Imagine a forest in which each “tree” has road signs instead of branches. The open-air museum in Watson Lake has collected an impressive collection of signs, partly made by special order, and most of them are simply pioneering: more than 70 thousand road signs were missing around the world.
The collection of pointers has its own history associated with the Second World War. In the midst of the war, the United States pledged to help the Soviet Union with technology, ferrying planes through Alaska and Chukotka. However - that's bad luck! - 2 thousand kilometers of Canadian off-road almost disrupted the grandiose Lend-Lease. I had to urgently build a highway, which was named Alaska. American military builders were sent to pave the road.
One day, a bulldozer accidentally demolished a homemade sign that indicated distances to nearby cities. Private Carl K. Lindley was ordered to place the sign. A guy who missed a distant home in the Midwest nailed another plaque to the crumpled signpost, marking the distance to his native Danville. Other soldiers also did not stand aside and supplemented the road sign with the names of their hometowns. It was in 1942.
Almost 50 years have passed, and in 1990 the number of exhibits in the open-air museum reached 10 thousand. And over the past 20 years since that time, it has increased by 7 times - now the "Forest of road signs" has more than 70 thousand plates. Every year the collection is replenished with 2, 5-4 thousand street signs, signs "Welcome to …" and other exhibits with well-known or stupid names.
Reading these signs, you try to imagine the places where they were "registered" before, and you are surprised at the enthusiasts who bring here road signs with the names of their hometowns. They say that there is even an exhibit measuring 3 × 2 meters, borrowed from the German Autobahn.
Orphan plates can turn out to be a funny installation fence, or a "forest" can grow, where each pillar reminds everyone of a well-known language tree. It illustrates the fact that the languages of our planet are closely or distantly related, despite all the differences. Likewise, cities are just different names in the essence of one anthroposphere common to all of us.
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