A new “Historic Washington” billboard, sponsored by Farmers and Merchants Bank, directs visitor traffic from the Sam McGill Parkway into town. In an ongoing effort to attract attention to all the things that Washington offers travelers, the Downtown Development Authority, working with local merchants and others, has placed billboards in prominent places around the city.

The billboards, placed on the Sam McGill Parkway next to the Home Café and on the Athens Highway west of town in Rayle, are an ongoing effort to bring some of the heavy daily traffic off the bypasses and into Downtown Washington. At the sign location by the Home Café, for instance, Georgia DOT traffic counters registered an average of 5,500 vehicles passing every day on that stretch of Highway 78. “We decided that we needed a generic ‘Welcome to Washington’ billboard,” said the DDA’s Henry Harris. “And we wanted to go to the business community to commit to help pay for it, for a month or whatever.”

His first stop was the office of local leader in the business community. “When I left his office, I had a commitment for all 12 months. He didn’t want any publicity about it, he just knew it was something that needed to be done.”

With backing for the first billboard secured, the DDA decided to put up a second billboard. Support for that billboard is going to come from two sources. “The Payroll Development Authority can pay for up to half of the year,” Harris said, “and merchants and others will have to support it for the other half of the year. We have some commitments, but we need more, in any amount.”

The DDA is hoping to have a third billboard on the Thomson Highway as funds allow.

“We welcome contributions from individuals, from businesses, from organizations, anybody,” Harris said.

The column logo on the Washington billboard, Harris said, is DDAcopyrighted and designed to be used all over. “We have adopted that logo for use with everything we do. It’s going to be on everything, signs, web sites, we want it to go everywhere.”