Clark Byers, the man who painted "See Rock City" on more than 800 barns over 30 years, most of them multiple times, was also the inventor of the distinctive red-and-black birdhouse which is now a principal advertising device for Rock City. Hundreds of thousands, probably millions of them, have been sold.
I went to interview Byers at his home in 1995 as I was working on the Rock City Barns book. A warm, soft-spoken man of deep Christian faith, Byers was quietly happy with the life he had lived. In addition to his years of painting Rock City barns, he was the developer of Sequoyah Caverns, a tourist attraction in northeast Alabama, and at the age of 80 still ran a three hundred acre farm. For years the roof of his home on U.S. 11 in Rising Fawn, Georgia, just over the state line from Alabama, sported a "See Rock City" sign.
"I painted the first birdhouse that Rock City ever had," he told me. "It was my original idea -- I didn't copy nobody. I was gonna use it for a mailbox, but the Post Office wouldn't let us. It's still settin' in my garage."
Of course I wanted to see it, so he brought it out and placed it atop his mailbox. Naturally, I took a picture. And that's the story of how the Rock City birdhouse came to be.
Rock City picked up on the idea and began making and selling the birdhouses. As far as I know, Clark never received a cent for his invention.
Blog note: Sorry to have missed Friday's post. We are in a deep freeze here, with temperatures just above zero. We are keeping warm in our RV, but our water is frozen. All-in-all, we're doing okay. No thaw predicted until Tuesday.
If you enjoy my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/ Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.
The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023.
Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
No worries Dave, I wondered if you were getting our lovely weather that far south.
ReplyDeleteFriday we had -9 F with a -33 F wind chill here in West Central Indiana. It makes a life long Hoosier wish for more temperate climes. Praying for you and your family to thaw out soon.