A sign at the north entrance of Poplar Bluff declares the city to be “Gateway to the Ozarks.” Now a sister sign is under construction east of town on Highway 60 to pique the curiosity of drivers passing by.
The original sign stands at the entrance of Westwood Boulevard and only greets visitors already on their way into town, explained Steve Halter, president of the Greater Poplar Bluff Area Chamber of Commerce.
“The sign on the north side to me is beautiful...I think it’s very unique. But again, a lot of those people don’t see that unless they come into town, where this is going to get people that are zipping by that maybe have no chance to come in,” he said.
The new sign, which is being built through grants and donated labor, will be bigger and more noticeable than the original at 50 feet wide and 28 feet tall. A long arch will bear Poplar Bluff’s nickname.
“We really wanted to keep the brand of ‘Gateway to the Ozarks’ going. We like that branding. And we modeled it after the sign that they put on the north side,” Halter remarked.
Halter has had a central role in the process, but the idea came from county commissioner Butch Anderson years ago. Anderson “planted a seed” in Halter’s head for a sign on the Highway 60 bypass.
“Since we have this bypass that goes around town and people that may go by and not even come into town, they need to see something more than just a green sign that says Poplar Bluff, Missouri,” Halter said, echoing Anderson’s sentiment.
Planning began in earnest in 2021. Halter said the land needed to be acquired from MoDOT’s before anything else, a lengthy process that city manager Matt Winters navigated.
Meanwhile, John Sumrall of Sumrall Construction reached for volunteers and found businesses willing to sponsor work or only charge material costs. These included Tenmile Companies, Sanders Construction and Smith &. Co. Steelworker Matt Dodd, who owns the restaurant bread+butter, will assemble the arch. The project has also received manpower from MoDOT and the W.E. Sears Youth Center in clearing trees from the site, Halter said, as well as support from the city and county.
Halter stressed that the project costs taxpayers nothing, except for the fraction of their state taxes funding grants Poplar Bluff has received.
“We didn’t ask anything extra of the taxpayers and we’re not diverting local tax funds to something like this. This is just something that the community has put together and everybody’s working on,” he said.
He added, “The whole sign itself, if everyone was charging labor, would probably be upwards of $100,000.”
The timeline for the sign depends on when volunteers can work between paying projects. With the trees cleared out, Halter said the next step is pouring concrete for the base, hopefully in the next month. The rest of the sign’s construction is up in the air, but “I would be extremely happy to have this thing up by late fall,” Halter stated.
The business community’s response to the sign project reminded Halter of a similar effort at Poplar Bluff High School, when contractors and owners chipped in to create a giant “PB” made of landscaping rock in front of the Mules football stadium.
“It’s just really neat to live in a community where people still do that — you know, take care of each other...just because it’s the right thing to do, and because they take pride in our community,” Halter said.