New road signs installed on the Haines Highway by the Department of Transportation last month have some residents scratching their heads.
Last month, the state placed 16 signs between 6.5 Mile and 11.5 Mile Haines Highway, including signs pointing to “Ripinski Trail” at the 7 Mile Saddle trailhead (spelled with the controversial ‘i’ spelling of Mount Ripinsky, a mountain named after former Mayor of Haines and U.S. Commissioner, Solomen Ripinsky in 1890), one indicating entrance to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, a handful of “scenic view” signs pointed at walls of trees, and several indicating “Chilkat River 1,” then “Chilkat River” with an arrow pointing left, then “Chilkat River 2.”
“Some of them are a little confusing,” said Mosquito Lake resident Jim Stanford. “I just wonder what they were trying to convey. Is there more than one Chilkat River?”
The Chilkat River signs are intended to indicate river access, according to Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesperson Meadow Bailey. “There are four signs that say ‘Chilkat River 1,’” Bailey said. “They are at about (milepost) MP 7.5, MP 9, MP 9.5, and MP 11 and mean that access to the Chilkat River is one mile ahead. The sign further along the highway that says ‘Chilkat River 2’ indicates that access to the Chilkat River is two miles ahead.”
The language for the signs was developed in coordination with Alaska State Parks, and had to adhere to principles that disallow for too much writing, according to the environmental coordinator for the Haines Highway project, Jim Scholl.
The signs are intended for travelling visitors, Scholl said. But some of the signs appear to be confusing them, as well.
The handful of blue signs that read “scenic view,” for example, with arrows pointed toward the Chilkat River that is disguised behind walls of trees.
“There’s one that points to a scenic view area and really there’s no view,” Stanford said, referencing the 11 Mile pullout with a “scenic view” sign that points toward a paved pullout and a stand of trees.
Lynette Campbell, 26 Mile resident, said she recently saw a couple parked in the pullout that looked confused. “She had her hands on her hips looking into the trees and turning to the man who raised his arms and shrugged his shoulders like ‘I dunno’,” Campbell said. “That was bonus funny. DOT has a grand sense of humor.”
Bailey said the scenic view signs “correspond to waysides that travelers can stop and look at the Chilkat River and the Chilkat Range filtered through trees with, hopefully, perched bald eagles nearby.”
Scholl said the intention was also to indicate resting spots “to give travelers and interested persons an opportunity to pull off the highway and enjoy the scenery and take some photographs.”
“It is a little confusing, but I think it’s nice that they provided an opportunity for travelers to pull over,” said Dawn Drotos, Mosquito Lake resident.
State Parks Southeast superintendent Preston Kroes said he did not work on the sign language, since the project development predated his tenure. Kroes said he first saw the signs while driving in Haines recently and “noticed they were a little different than ordinary.”
“I noticed they were blue and usually recreational signs are brown,” Kroes said. “Maybe it was one of those things during the policy that nobody caught that they were a little different. I think something got missed and some of those signs are slightly incorrectly colored or marked. It might be something we could remedy,” he said. “They do serve a purpose and even though they might not be our normal standard, they at least do what they were meant to do.”
Traffic engineer on the project, David Epstein, said that the green Chilkat River signs are guide signs, so their color is appropriate, as are white on blue signs to indicate a rest area or other area roadside. “The manual gives leeway, and scenic view falls into ‘other roadside areas’,” Epstein said. The state said they do not intend to cut down any trees to clear a viewpoint. “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” Epstein said. “These scenic wayside signs point at spots for visitors to look at the rivers and mountains filtered through the trees.”