Zipping down today’s interstate highways it’s easy to forget what Iowa’s highways were like just 70 years ago. Too young to remember? Well, let me fill you in.

Though some two-lane highways were being widened at the time, many of Iowa’s primary roads and bridges were too narrow for the increasing amount of traffic and larger vehicles. Rounded curbs on hills threw your car to the left if you steered a bit too much to the right.

In 1954 a white dash replaced a continuous black line as the center line on Iowa’s paved highways and a continuous yellow line identified no-passing zones. Then in 1959 Iowa became the first state in the nation to install the familiar yellow pennant “no passing” signs.

Until nearly 70 years ago there was no specific speed limit on Iowa’s rural primary highways. Then the Iowa legislature set speed limits of 70 in the daytime and 60 at night. When the first Iowa segment of interstate highway opened in 1958 interstate highway speed limits were 75 daytime and 65 nighttime.

Most cars didn’t have air conditioning 70 years ago nor did they have DVD screens hanging from headrests. Shoot, we didn’t even have headrests back then. A sound system? Try an AM-only radio that was still optional equipment.

Seventy years ago I was still a kid sitting in the backseat with my brothers watching the world go by and reading signs along the highway. Among my favorites were the Burma Shave signs.

Burma Shave, a popular brushless shaving cream at the time, was advertised along highways in groups of small red signs with white block letters. The first several signs in succession each featured one line of a poem. The final sign simply said “Burma Shave.”

The Burma Shave messages were not necessarily well-crafted poetry, but their messages were direct: “Altho insured/Remember, kiddo/They don’t pay you/They pay your widow/Burma-Shave.”

Many of the poems addressed traffic safety: “There’s hardly a man/That’s now alive/Who passed on hills/At seventy-five/Burma-Shave.”

The company, of course, also promoted its product: “This cream makes /The farmer’s daughter/Plant her tu-lips/Where she oughter/Burma-Shave.”

There were other signs along the highway that made an even greater impression on a young mind.

A diamond-shaped black and white sign with a large red “X” at the top was located at the sites of traffic fatalities. Immediately under the “X” was the word “THINK.” Sites of multiple fatalities bore multiple signs.

The signs were developed by State Automobile and Casualty Underwriters, Inc., of Des Moines which discontinued the program in the 1960s.

There were still some THINK signs left when I got my drivers license and they were, indeed, a grim reminder to drive carefully.

Many communities promote themselves with welcome signs at their highway entrances. Where I grew up Jewell was “A Gem in a Friendly Setting,” Iowa Falls was “The Scenic City” and Webster City was “Main Street USA.”

Alden, which hosted a dam on the Iowa River in Hardin County, boasted that it was “The best town by a dam site.” Enjoying the homophone, my brothers and I delighted in reading the Alden sign aloud until our father, who didn’t even like it when we said “darn,” hollered, “Shut up!” Sometimes brother Dave would sneak in just one more “dam.”

I continue to enjoy small town highway welcome signs. The little southwest town of Gravity claims, “If Gravity goes, we all go!” In northwest Iowa the community of Albert City, settled by immigrants from Sweden, brags on its welcome sign, “How Swede it is.”

When time allows these days, I like to get off the interstate and take the lesser-traveled roads. Some of the old signs are gone. Some of the small towns along the way have declined and there are fewer farmsteads, but in the theater of my mind I can still see the Burma Shave signs.

“On curves ahead/Remember, sonny/That rabbit’s foot/Didn’t save the bunny/Burma-Shave.”

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. © 2025 by Huisman Communications.