Forty-Dollar Rembrandts

Heat shimmered in wavy lines over the blacktop. Every window of our ‘56 Plymouth was open, but I was sweltering, wedged between siblings in the backseat. My father offered a temporary diversion by pointing out a barn with the words See Rock City painted in bold white letters on the black roof. Someone said, “That’s the third one we’ve seen today!” Then another would argue, “No, that’s only the second one,” and for a brief moment we had forgotten the oppressive heat. As a boy, I did not realize I was witnessing works of art that would become an iconic part of Americana. 

At its zenith, this ingenious form of outdoor advertising urging motorists to visit Rock City, could be viewed on the sides and rooftops of around 900 barns spread along 12,000 miles of highways in 19 states. Over 800 of those barns have disappeared; razed for highway expansion, malls and subdivisions, or they’ve simply succumbed to decades of inattention. 

Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction atop Lookout Mountain outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, was established in 1932 by Garnet Carter. Rock City was an outgrowth of a rock garden designed by Carter’s wife and visited by tourists from around the country. 

In 1935, Carter came up with the idea to advertise on barn roofs. He hoped that when the Great Depression wound down and Americans started traveling again, the signs would lure them to his unique attraction. It worked. 

For three decades, the signs were painted freehand with a four-inch brush by Clark Byers. Dubbed a Barnyard Rembrandt, Byers was paid $40 for each paint job. According to Anita Capps Armstrong’s book, See Rock City Barns: A Tennessee Tradition, the first sign Byers painted was in Jasper, Tennessee, and said, 35 Miles to Beautiful Rock City. The advertisements most often said See Rock City, but others, such as To Miss Rock City Would Be a Pity, See 7 States from Rock City, and When You See Rock City, You See the Best, were also common. 

Born in Alabama, Byers worked in a cotton mill and bottled buttermilk for three dollars a week before he was hired by Carter in 1936 to paint the barns. He became a barn painter by accident, or perhaps it was fate. He was working at Southern Ad Company in Chattanooga when his boss took him “up on th’ mountain to meet Garnet Carter.” 

Equipped with paint, chalk, brushes, ropes and two helpers, Byers drove the highways and byways looking for barns and willing barn owners who, along with their free paint job, got Rock City bathmats and thermometers for allowing the advertisement to be painted on their barns. Those who insisted on more than knickknacks were paid about five dollars, but sometimes even as much as twenty.

Because the barns were various shapes and sizes, each sign was different, but all featured the trademark white lettering on a black background. The number of words and their arrangement varied based on the size and shape of the barn. Byers never used stencils. The rooftop was painted black and then he sketched out the words in chalk and hand painted the letters. He usually could paint a barn in 1 to 3 hours.

Byers braved charging bulls, slippery roofs and lightning bolts to get the job done. He quit in 1968 when he made contact with a high-voltage wire while painting a barn near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The electric line dropped down and a truck went by and blew it over against the metal board. His left side was paralyzed and the hair was singed off his head.

The experience put him out of commission for several months, and when he recovered he decided it was time for a new career. The barn-painting program was winding down anyway because of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 and the nearly-complete interstate system, which was luring travelers away from the old highways.

After his barn-painting stint, Byers owned Sequoyah Caverns and Campground in Alabama before retiring to his farm in Trenton, Georgia. His daughter, Nancy Newgard of Trenton, said he spent his spare time painting an occasional sign for a church or high school ballfield, hunting raccoons, watching football, and playing golf.

“My Dad never had any aspirations to be famous,” Newgard said. “He loved Rock City Gardens and enjoyed what he did for them for 30 years. He was proud of his work and particular about it.” He was so particular he often bristled when he saw paintings that reproduced his barns. He never thought the artists did his letters justice.

Through the years, See Rock City was so entrenched into Americana that the slogan and its offshoots were parodied in cartoons and copied as valued graffiti on British subways, French restrooms, Hong Kong hillsides, and German walls during World War ll. Just as soldiers inked “Kilroy was Here,” younger troops scrawled on a Post Exchange wall in Vietnam: “Only 13,000 miles to Lookout Mountain.” Later during the Gulf War, troops mounted a Rock City birdhouse in the Kuwait desert. 

The birdhouses, which recreate the painted barns in miniature and remain one of Rock City’s bestselling souvenirs, were an accidental invention by Byers. The painter, who declared himself such a “nut for Rock City,” once painted See Rock City on the roof of his own home, and made a miniature barn as his mailbox. When the U.S. Post Office objected, Byers turned his mailbox into a birdhouse.

In 1997, Rock City commissioned photographer David B. Jenkins to produce the coffee table book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era featuring both color and black and white images.

Clark Byers died in 2004. Still, his work endures. Three states—Tennessee, Ohio, and West Virginia—have declared the barns historic sites, and Tennessee boasts most of those that remain.

Although Rock City has long been overshadowed by its own advertising, it remains a spectacular blend of natural beauty and a Disneyesque world of storybook characters, elf statuary and Fairyland caverns. Flower-bordered trails, deep stone gorges, and swinging bridges lead to cliff tops offering a view of seven states. 

“We still maintain 74 barns,” says Roy Davis, manager of R & R Outdoor Advertising, “although that number can change overnight due to the effect of storms on some of the more fragile structures.”

Rock City barns once dotted the rural landscape. Today, spotting one of these ever-recognizable structures is rare, but they have the power to evoke memories of a time when sedans and station wagons carried families over winding two-lane highways in search of adventure; a time when fast-food meant pulling out the ice chest and picnic basket; when lodging meant mom-and-pop motels and cottages. 

These days, if I am lucky enough to happen across one of the few remaining structures, I can linger by the roadside, thanks to my air-conditioned car, and recall the glory days of Rock City barns.