B4
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Volunteer handcrafts signs to guide Northwest hikers
Finn among last to carry on tradition
By IAN McCLUSKEY
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Daniel Finn had long been a hiker, passing countless
trail signs, stopping at some for direction. He’d notice some
had been disfi gured by graffi ti, and some even smashed or
stolen by vandals. “Someone should do something about
this,” his hiking companions would say with dismay.
Finn agreed. He loved hiking in national forests, and
the iconic brown trail signs with yellow letters had always
been symbols to him of adventure and communion with
nature.
When Finn learned that the U.S. Forest Service often
faced limited budget and staffi ng to maintain the trail
signs, he stepped up to help.
Finn had never made a trail sign before, however. He
wasn’t even very familiar with woodworking, but he vol-
unteered to become a sign maker for the Giff ord Pinchot
National Forest.
The Mount Adams Ranger Station in Trout Lake, Wash-
ington, is one of the few that still has a woodworking shop,
and Finn has become one of the last people to carry on the
tradition of making the classic trail signs by hand.
“I struggled a little bit with it at fi rst,” Finn said, “but in
time, it came to me.”
Several days a week, Finn comes to the woodworking
shop to make trail signs.
He picks up a heavy, rough-sawn plank of Oregon white
oak and takes it to a large crosscut saw. The native hard-
wood species lends itself to durable signs. The wood is
locally sourced and milled by a family sawmill just down
the road from the ranger station.
Finn cuts off a length about 20-inches long from the
plank. “You can’t always tell by looking at the piece of
wood that it’ll make a good sign,” he said, slowly turning
the board in his hands.
He then takes it to the planer. Pushing the rough board
into one side of the planer, it emerges from the other side
with a spray of sawdust. Finn passes it through a few times
until his board is smooth and ready for the letters.
Finn shuffl es as he walks, moving signifi cantly slower
than he once did.
Growing up in the timber town of Molalla, he had been
a hiker for as long as he can remember, exploring trails
with his father. He started his career as a forester for Wey-
erhaeuser, replanting trees on Mount St. Helens after the
1980 eruption. He then worked for the fl ood control dis-
trict in Longview, Washington. He continued to hike in
the backcountry as much as he could during his career
and had hopes of spending unfettered time on trails in his
retirement.
Ian McCluskey/Oregon Public Broadcasting
The trail signs Daniel Finn makes for wilderness areas are made to look
hand-hewn, with rough edges and left unpainted to weather naturally.
After 45 years in Longview, he moved to the small town
of Trout Lake at the base of Mount Adams. He volunteered
for the district ranger station with the idea of serving as a
volunteer wilderness ranger in the summer season — the
perfect retirement role to roam the vast forest around the
mountain.
As Finn hiked, he noted that many trail signs needed to
be replaced. He fi gured making signs could give him an
indoor project for the cold and snowy winter. Then the next
summer he could take those signs to their proper locations.
“Unfortunately I had a mild stroke,” said Finn. And then he
had knee replacement surgery.
Physically unable to amble in the backcountry, Finn
focused his eff orts on sign-making.
Finn clamps the smooth board onto a fl at work table
with an unusual swing arm mechanism. He slides in small
letter stencils; these are standardized size and font, known
in the Forest Service as “ASA Series C letters,” but recog-
nizable to millions of visitors to national forests across the
country.
This standard font has become indelibly paired with trail
signs in national forests. It’s simple, easy to read, and also
seems to fi t seamlessly into the rustic aesthetic of trails and
campgrounds. This enduring design was intentional.
Origins of the iconic sign
In the early 1960s, the Forest Service decided it needed
to replace a hodgepodge of signage with a consistent, uni-
form image. The agency turned to Virgil “Bus” Carrell.
Carrell studied forestry at the University of Washington and
became a forest ranger in the 1930s. He fought forest fi res,
went on search and rescue missions, served as the district
ranger for Mount Hood’s Clackamas River area, and was
awarded the national “ranger of the year” in 1949.
When the Forest Service asked him to take on the task
of inventing a standardized design for all forest service
signs, Carrell teamed up with Forest Service artist Rudy
Wendelin, who had created the iconic mascot for wildfi re
awareness: Smokey Bear.
They came up with the now ubiquitous trapezoidal signs
— with the standard brown and yellow colors — seen com-
monly in front of every ranger station.
The brown-and-yellow color scheme carries down to
the smaller trail signs, like the ones made today by Finn.
Finn pulls up a chair, sits down and switches on his
sign-making machine. It comes to life with a high-pitched
whir. These days, most signs on public lands are ordered
from manufacturers and made by computer-operated
equipment. The machine at the Mount Adams Ranger Sta-
tion is all manual.
By tracing the outline of the letters with one hand, the
arm moves a spinning router blade on the wood. It is a con-
cept dating back at least as long as the early 1800s, to a
writing device known as a polygraph. Two pens would be
attached to an articulating arm so that as one was moved,
the other would follow in duplicate. The most famous user
of this invention was Thomas Jeff erson, who had one at
his writing desk. Finn’s router tool is essentially the same
concept: as Finn moves a stylus inside the letter stencil,
the router on the other side of the arm plunges into the oak
board and carves out each letter.
Using the standardized letter templates, Finn’s signs are
almost identical, yet each piece of wood is slightly diff er-
ent, and each motion of his hands may swerve or shake just
slightly. It creates uniformity, and yet retains a handmade
feeling.
Finn switches off the machine, brushes the sawdust from
the smooth wood and traces the edge of his freshly-carved
letters with his fi ngertip. “Well, little fuzzy,” he said, “but
I’ll put that through the planer and it’ll smooth it right up.”
Leaving it wild
In addition to the iconic brown-and-yellow signs, Finn
makes signs specifi cally for designated wilderness areas.
These use the same lettering, but are left unpainted, and
allowed to naturally weather.
Finn goes an extra step, creating scallops along the
edges. “In the old days, they would cut the signs out with
an ax,” said Finn. “That’s why the wilderness signs are
kerfed along the edges to make them look like they’re
hand-hewn.”
To complete the authentic rustic look, he’ll mount these
onto hand-cut cedar poles, rather than the uniform four-by-
four pressure-treated posts.
The Forest Service manual for signage recommends
using signs around ranger stations, campgrounds and the
popular trails to give people plenty of direction and useful
information. In wild and undeveloped areas, though, it rec-
ommends using minimal signage to enhance “the hiker’s
feelings of self-reliance with respect to orienteering skills,
self-discovery, challenge and solitude.”
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