Article that appeared in the fall 2015 issue of Wildflower magazine. Discusses the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 and how Lady Bird Johnson and President Johnson worked to improve scenic beauty and native plant conservation along America's roadsides. Interviews with Lady Bird Johnson's former staff.

1. Lady Bird Johnson stands in a field of wildflowers alongside a
Texas state highway. The first lady inspired the Highway
Beautification Act of 1965, which celebrates its 50th anniversary
this October. doing so, she set in motion a number of roadside-
related initiatives that endure to this day.
Acts of
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Highway Beautification Act Turns 50
WRITTEN BY CHRISTINA KOSTA PROCOPIOU
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Beauty
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3. S MARTHA TILLER SPED
through our nation’s capital city
six years ago, splashes of pink
cherry blossoms greeted her through the
taxi window. “Welcome to Washington in
the spring,” said her taxi driver. “Isn’t it
beautiful? Look at all these beautiful flow-
ers. We’re sure lucky to have had Lady
Bird Johnson here.”
“There I was,” Tiller says, “45 years
after Mrs. Johnson had left the White
House, being schooled about my former
boss and how she’d made Washington,
D.C., beautiful.”The Texan chose to keep
mum and enjoy the scenery rather than
tell the driver of her past work with Mrs.
Johnson at the Johnsons’Texas ranch.
Of course Lady Bird Johnson is
remembered not only for bringing taxi
passengers a view of cherry blossoms in
Washington, but for turning the entire
nation’s consciousness toward the need for
better scenic views across America. The
signature achievement that gained her
this reputation and laid the groundwork
for roadside enhancement and conserva-
tion was the Highway Beautification Act,
which celebrates its 50th anniversary on
October 22.
The bill, often called “Lady Bird’s
Bill,” was meant to reduce junkyards and
billboards and increase scenic beauty
along our nation’s roads that receive fed-
eral funding. The president himself
famously told his cabinet, “I love this
woman and she wants this bill, so by
gosh, she’ll get it.” (Incidentally, it was
Rep. Bob Dole who coined it “Lady
Bird’s Bill” rather derisively, as he led the
opposition to the act.)
Nash Castro advised the White
House on beautification issues as the
National Parks Service liaison. He
remembers waiting for members of
Congress to arrive at the White House for
a Salute to Congress event the evening the
bill was being debated. “Well into the
evening, the legislation was approved and
dinner was finally served,” says Castro,
who credits President Johnson with the
outcome. “The president got the bill
passed by personally injecting himself into
the fray.”
Some of the bill’s supporters regret
that amendments weakened the bill, actu-
ally giving the billboard industry more
power. Still, all is not lost. Groups like
Scenic America continue to urge bill
reform, and organizations such as the
Wildflower Center work to influence
transportation agencies to approach road-
sides ecologically. Mrs. Johnson is for
good reason widely remembered as the
environmental first lady.
More than 200 beautification and
conservation laws were passed and 47
national parks created during the Johnson
presidency. That’s more than during any
administration before or since. Those
close to the couple credit the first lady
with inspiring them.
Bonnie Harper-Lore retired in 2009
from the Federal Highway Administration,
where she served as the vegetation man-
agement program manager since 1993. In
1987 she was working for Minnesota’s
Department of Transportation when she
received an invitation from Lady Bird
Johnson to gather with employees from
other state departments of transportation
at her Texas ranch to discuss restoring and
preserving native plants on roadsides.
When Harper-Lore's boss wouldn’t permit
her to attend on company time, she took
vacation time and paid her own way.
“Mrs. Johnson wanted to know what
obstacles we faced in planting more wild-
flowers and what resources we needed to
make it happen. I remember being gath-
ered in the living room as we all shared
our stories until nearly midnight,”
Harper-Lore says.
“It was like visiting your grandmoth-
er’s house. The next morning over break-
fast, the conversations continued with the
first lady joining us, gracious and charm-
ing as ever in an old chenille bathrobe,
with no makeup. At one point, Mrs.
22 Fall 2015 • WIlDFlOWer
ABOVE: President Lyndon B. Johnson hands
lady Bird Johnson a bill-signing pen in the east
room of the White House at the signing of the
Highway Beautification act on October 22, 1965.
ACROSS TOP: In a picture made possible by
lady Bird Johnson’s efforts to make a more
beautiful capital city, the first lady and two
young people stand among blooming white azal-
eas in Washington, D.C. ACROSS BOTTOM:
Lady Bird Johnson plants pansies at the White
House as Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and
others look on.
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PHOTOBYROBERTKNUDSEN/LBJLIBRARY
Johnson looked off wistfully, saying some-
thing like, ‘So much to do and so little
time.’”
Not much time passed before Mrs.
Johnson encouraged Texas Sen. Lloyd
Bentsen to add an amendment to the fed-
eral 1987 Surface Transportation and
Uniform Relocation Assistance Act
(STURAA). That transportation bill
mandated that one-quarter of 1 percent of
landscaping projects receiving federal
funds (almost all interstate, state, county
and municipal roads across the country)
would be spent on planting native wild-
flowers. “With that, the Federal Highway
Administration Wildflower Program was
begun, and five years later I replaced its
first director, Gene Johnson,” says
Harper-Lore.
During her first week in Washington,
Harper-Lore found herself in a meeting
with representatives from 15 other agen-
cies working together on the invasive
plant issue. “I was told that we at the
highway administration were part of the
problem. At that time many states were
still planting species, in the name of ero-
sion control, that were becoming invasive
to adjacent lands,” says Harper-Lore.
Soon after, she changed the name of
the Wildflower Program to the
Vegetation Management Program.
“Highway corridors connected all lands,
and we needed to plant native plants and
control invasive plants in an integrated
way. To protect native wildflower plant-
ings and existing remnants, we needed to
control weeds. All vegetation is connect-
ed, and what we do on roadsides affects
everyone else,” she says.
No one who personally knew Lady
Bird Johnson questions whether she
understood that what was being called
beautification was really conservation.
Marge Morton served as Mrs. Johnson’s
social secretary in Texas from 1976
through 1990. “At the time, there was
pressure to get contractors not to mow the
roadsides. Mrs. Johnson was not at all
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5. 24 FALL 2015 • WILDFLOWER
pushy but had her way of voicing her
opinions that wildflowers should not be
mown until after they went to seed, for
the benefit of wildlife and the public who
enjoyed their beauty.”
Back in her home state, for 20 years
Lady Bird Johnson gave cash awards to
Texas Department of Transportation dis-
tricts that used native Texas plants to the
fullest possible extent. As her social secre-
taries, Tiller and then Morton helped the
first lady organize the annual Texas
Highway Beautification Awards cere-
monies at the Johnsons’ Texas ranch,
where Mrs. Johnson treated winners to a
barbecue lunch.
PHOTOBYFRANKWOLFE/LBJLIBRARY
Lady Bird Johnson listens to President Lyndon B.
Johnson (not in frame) speaking at the signing of the
Highway Beautification Act. Seated next to her are Rep.
Ed Edmondson and Sen. Jennings Randolph.
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Morton’s memories of the first lady
involve hours spent driving around the
ranch to see what wildflowers were in
bloom. “I know that on the weekends the
Secret Service would drive her to track
down wildflowers around Central Texas.
Someone once told me that wildflowers
marched across Texas from east to west at a
rate of 3 miles per day. She must have seen
hundreds of miles of that,” Morton says.
Tiller recalls a different kind of
travel. If you know Austin now, it’s hard to
imagine that its iconic Town Lake (now
Lady Bird Lake) was once a
polluted eyesore, neglected and overgrown
with weeds. That’s how it was
in the 1970s, before the Johnsons
got involved with the Town Lake
Beautification Committee.
“I remember running up and down
Town Lake with Mrs. Johnson, checking
to see how the plantings were coming
along. That wasn’t unusual. We spent a
lot of time in the outdoors and gardens
walking here and there to look at flowers
and plants,” says Tiller. “I don’t kid when
I say that I had holes the size of quarters
in my shoes from walking Town Lake
and the ranch.
“When people ask me what was it like
to work with Lady Bird Johnson, I tell
them, ‘I always had holes in my shoes.’” a
Lady Bird Johnson greets a local man in
Appalachia during a 1964 visit to economically
depressed parts of the country. The first lady
believed that beautification and the environ-
ment were issues that affect and could connect
all Americans.
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