Stafford, Va. –– Virginia’s highway welcome sign has a cardinal on it. Now, Stafford County wants its own specially-designed welcome signs.
The Virginia Department of Transportation is reviewing plans to place welcome signs at key entrances to the county –– on Kings Highway (Va. 3), Warrenton Road (U.S. 17), and both north and south entrances to Jefferson Davis Highway (U.S. 1).
The red and blue signs will state “Stafford County: George Washington’s Boyhood Home,” and would depict a colonial-era child –– to evoke thoughts of George Washington as a child –– playing a game.
“We’ve determined that Stafford County had a lot of wonderful attributes, but something that allowed us to be unique and to find something that no one else in the world could claim, that we were George Washington’s boyhood home,” said Stafford tourism manager M.C. Moncure.
Washington as a child lived at Ferry Farm, across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg.
The county wants to capture that colonial era-image and erect a regional sign system that will not only welcome visitors to the county, but through a series of smaller signs, called “trailblazers,” guide visitors to parks and other points of interest.
Moncure is working with a consultant firm that helped design the state’s first regional signage system, in the Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown area.
Stafford is one of three counties that VDOT has allowed to experiment with new welcoming signage. Fairfax and Loudoun counties are also working on their own signs, according to Moncure.
The lager signs will sit on stone that is meant to replicate Aquia Stone, which was pulled from Stafford’s Government Island to build the White House in Washington.
“You could do a post and panel, which is four posts and a sign on sticks which is what everybody had, but I will tell you that particular look is a beautiful look and it’s very refined and it’s quite something that we wish we would have done later down the road if we don’t go ahead and do it now,” said Moncure.
Eventually, Moncure said she would like to see the signs posted on Interstate 95.
