Highway Beautification Act

In the United States, highway beautification is the subject of the Highway Beautification Act, passed in the Senate on September 16, 1965 and in the U.S. House of Representatives on October 8, 1965, and signed by the President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 22, 1965. This created "23 USC 131" or Section 131 of Title 23, United States Code (1965), commonly referred to as "Title I of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, as Amended".

The act called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System and the existing federal-aid primary highway system. It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development.

In 1958, Congress passed the first outdoor advertising control legislation commonly known as the "Bonus Act", PL 85-381. However, since it was repealed and replaced by the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, it is now found in the United States Code at 23 U.S.C. 131 (j). Its provisions still exist by reason of agreements with the states.

The Bonus Act provided an incentive to states to control outdoor advertising within 660 feet (200 m) of the Interstate highway system. States which volunteered for the program would receive a bonus of one-half of one percent of the Federal highway construction costs on segments of Interstate highways controlling outdoor advertising.

Two amendments were adopted which allowed outdoor advertising along portions of Interstate highways. The first amendment was known as the "Cotton Amendment", which exempted any areas adjacent to part of a right-of-way, to July 1, 1956. This allowed billboards in areas adjacent to interchanges, overpasses, and along roads that ran parallel to the interstate

The second, known as the "Kerr Amendment", allowed outdoor advertising in commercial and industrial zones. Incorporated municipal boundaries were frozen as of September 21, 1959 (the date of the amendment). Another feature of the Kerr Amendment was that outside city limits, signs were permitted only in commercial or industrial zones as of September 21, 1959. (In effect the zones were frozen. Inside city boundaries, zoning was not frozen for purposes of outdoor advertising control.)

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