Acting Locally

Abstract

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Beautification Act, stipulating more flowers and street trees, walls to hide junkyards, and fewer billboards. Most legislation originates with the president or in Congress, but this bill came from the office of the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. Lady Bird insisted that beauty did not lie in wilderness alone, but also in common places, and that people’s surroundings influenced their feelings and actions. In this belief, she returned to an older meaning of environment as a set of influences that shape individuals. Lady Bird loved the arid West, which is why she made billboards the focus of her campaign. The Beautification Act eliminated billboards from all federal highways in rural areas, a policy that changed the experience of driving across the country.