Along the thousands of miles of new highways laid down by command of the Eisenhower administration came a flood of billboards hawking just about everything, including cigarettes. Few thought much of this unsightliness, but it took Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson and the first First Lady to take her politics outside of the White House, to do something about them. A noted proponent of earlier beautification campaigns, such as the one around Washington, D.C., she took her cause national in the case of highways.

On this day, October 22, in 1965, as part of his America the Beautiful Initiative, LBJ signed the Highway Beautification Act, restricting the size, number and placement of billboards over major roads.

Johnson, just back from major surgery, remarked in signing the bill “I saw Nature at its purest. The dogwoods had turned red. The maple leaves were scarlet and gold . . . . And not one foot of it was marred by a single unsightly man-made obstruction–no advertising signs, no junkyards. Well, doctors could prescribe no better medicine for me.” Although in practice little changed to reduce highway blight, the Act was a recognition that environmental stewardship extends to man-made objects as well.