The highly polarizing “Uncle Sam billboard” on Interstate 5 in Napavine has been stuck on the same two messages for four years. “How many Americans will we leave behind in Ukraine?” it reads for drivers traveling southbound and “No one died in WW2 so you could show papers to buy food!” for those going north.
But that could change within a couple of months.
The land beneath the 40-foot-by-13-foot sign — infamous for its provocative messages spelled out in marquee lettering and hand-painted portraits of a pouting Uncle Sam — is soon to come under new ownership.
The 3 1/2-acre property was listed for sale March 3 by Chehalis RE/MAX real estate associate Israel Jimenez for $2.5 million.
The billboard is included in the sale along with a commercial building and office that are also located on the triangular lot. The sellers will “make no warranties or representations on what can and can’t be done on that sign,” Jimenez said.
The Uncle Sam billboard is the legacy of the late Chehalis turkey and cattle farmer Al Hamilton and has stood since the 1960s, detested by some, celebrated by others and commended by many as a bold use of free speech.
Previous messages archived by onlookers on online messaging boards, Facebook, X and even Yelp have echoed birtherism conspiracies about former President Barack Obama, decried COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and hounded various politicians. Hamilton once told The Oregonian his favorite message was, “Let’s keep the Canal and give them Kissinger,” a reference to the treaty ceding control of the Panama Canal. He said many of the billboard displays came from the John Birch Society, a right-wing anti-communist political advocacy group.
The Hamilton family via their LLC, Hamilton Corner, are repositioning assets, Jimenez said. They are also selling an adjacent 30-plus acre property for $13 million. By March 21, the date Jimenez set to review incoming offers, the billboard property had received two offers, and the larger property received seven. Among the buyers interested in either property were investors from Lewis County and as far as California. Online listings show a sale is now pending.
The Uncle Sam billboard didn’t add any value to the property, but it made the listing an eye-catcher, Jimenez said. As discussion blew up on Facebook, users pointed out several times the irony of Jimenez’s Hispanic name juxtaposed with the sign’s history, deemed hateful by some. “I just thought that was hilarious,” Jimenez said and noted that “the sellers are really good people.”
Hamilton’s daughter, Sherryl Zurek who spoke to The Seattle Times previously, declined an interview for this story.
New ownership could usher in a new era of messaging for the billboard, but Jimenez could not reveal the identity of the potential new buyers, so their intentions for the sign are not yet known.
Hamilton and his wife, Ruth, first erected the billboard in 1967 on the farm they owned since the 1940s in protest of the government’s spending on welfare, The Chronicle reported. Over the decades, the sign has endured many roadblocks that threatened its future.
The billboard survived a lawsuit in 1979 that graduated to the Washington Supreme Court wherein the state argued that Hamilton’s billboard was “used to display political and religion commentary” in violation of the Scenic Vistas Act of 1971. But the court ruled in favor of Hamilton, finding that he was indeed advertising his farming business with small lettering alongside the political messages.
The death of the Uncle Sam billboard seemed imminent even decades ago when Hamilton sold his farm in 1995 before eventually moving the sign to its current location, The Seattle Times reported at the time. It seemed at risk again when Hamilton died in 2004 at the age of 84.
Throngs of people tried to have the sign taken down in 2020. One petition that gathered more than 75,000 signatures demanded that the Chehalis City Hall remove the billboard for “publicly posting racist and offensive statements.” That June, an arsonist even tried to burn the sign down but only succeeded in charring its base poles, The Chronicle reported. About 100 counter-protestors gathered to defend the billboard shortly after.
The Uncle Sam billboard may be seen by more than 52,000 commuters daily, Jimenez advertised on his listing, and undoubtedly has a massive impact. For the people of Lewis County, the sign is “a good representation of the general consensus from the area but certainly not all,” said Jason Mattson, executive director of the Lewis County Historical Museum. “There have been people who really tried to do their own messaging and then that’s been vandalized and quite quickly swept under the rug.”
A man set up an 8-foot rainbow-painted counter sign reading “Lewis County Welcomes Everyone,” but it was knocked down by a drunk 20-year-old within days, The Seattle Met reported.
“Some people love it and think it’s well within (Hamilton’s) rights to do it, and they like the messages and then some people see it as a complete embarrassment and hope to see it go away,” Mattson said.
The “Uncle Sam Right Wing Billboard” has 3 1/2 stars on Yelp. One user called it “the worst blight on I-5” in a one-star review while another user wrote in a five-star review that they “have always thought it is thought provoking.”
“I don’t always agree with messages but makes you think,” the reviewer said.
“We thought the billboards cranky, but worth looking at,” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board wrote in 2004 on the heels of Hamilton’s death. “That billboard is what makes America better because it celebrates a founding principle of our nation, the First Amendment. We completely disagree with Hamilton’s view of the world, but praise his discourse.”
