When it Comes to Signs, Chesterfield Is The Winner

Attending a meeting elsewhere, I determined that Chesterfield is much smarter about their city limit signs.

The Missouri Department of Transportation came out a few years ago saying they would no longer allow specialty city limit signs along interstate highways.

The special signs that were already up could stay until they needed to be replaced. Then, it must be all the same kind of green signs, with only the name of the city and the population, no exceptions.  

Chesterfield has its unique city limits signs are still up, the ones with the trees over the name CHESTERFIELD. While they look like carved wood they are actually hard plastic.  

Mike Geisel, Chesterfield’s director of public works told us the only way they are going to be destroyed is if they are run over by a tractor trailer. He said the signs are generally in good condition and should last for decades.   

Geisel said 17 signs in 2005 cost $44,000. The smaller plain city limits signs that are around $50 each.

He mentioned that a driving force behind the decorative signs was the Beautification Committee, that wanted something attractive and apparently not because anyone thought Chesterfield residents were “special.”   

However, many of neighboring Town and Country’s signs are not up, and others still up are falling apart.  

These wooden signs have rotted away over the last six years. This included a large city limits sign on I-64. 

A Conservation Commission says how the city needs to replace some very expensive wooden signs with animals carved in them, proclaiming it's a “Wildlife Corridor.”  

“Town and Country is special,” said Carl Strasser, a city conservation commissioner. He said the signs show Town and Country is better than other communities and tells Town and Country residents “they are home.”

This sounds sooooo nouveau riche, and smacks of thinking a zip code makes you special. It isn’t so. I still think we are all St. Louisans, who like pork steaks and thin crust pizzas covered in provel cheese—regardless of our street address.       

Anyway, Town and Country spent more than $14,000 putting up these heavy wood carved signs at city limits and along sections of Clayton Road and two-lane roads with heavy populations of deer.

So if you swerve off the road to avoid a deer, you have a chance of hitting a 250-pound sign. Since they are not the universal traffic deer caution sign, people may have no idea what they mean.