Interstate 19 in Arizona was designed and built during the brief era when the United States was going to join the rest of the world and start using the Metric System. Most of the signs along this freeway, with the exception of the speed limit signs and a handful of other signs, are still signed in metric. Since the interchange numbers are based on kilometer posts, versus mileposts as found in most of the country, converting I-19 to miles would involve renumbering all the interchanges. And the locals don’t particularly care for that idea.
ADOT (The Arizona Department of Transportation) has still toyed with the idea of converting everything back to the non-metric variation over the years, and as a result, has not replaced the interchange advance notification signs for well over two decades. The result? Button copy signs are still very much present along the roadway.
Before the days of reflective sheeting and computer cut lettering on these big signs, the sign legend was embedded with reflectors to make the message visible at night. These signs were manufactured by hand, each letter and other element mounted in place. Personally I always found these signs more professional looking than the computer generated stuff we have today; you can’t “stretch” a font when it’s made out of metal and reflectors. There was much more care put into the manufacturing of these signs, and as mentioned, this particular generation of these signs have been here for 25+ years. Today’s computer printed signs barely make it a decade.
Here’s an up close and personal look at one of these sign installations. It looks like there’s been a few folks with some guns over the years.
