Signs... of the times
As a family, we enjoy our annual 10-day camping trip. To me, road trips are an exciting way to travel and offer a way to discover small-town America.
Because of this lifetime of experience, I know that along the Highway 198 corridor — the most used access to Three Rivers — this community is being severely misrepresented or just plain ignored.
Here, on the eve of another busy visitor season, all local business owners should take a trip from Highway 99 to Three Rivers via 198 and look at the route critically through the tourists’ eyes.
If I were planning a camping trip to Sequoia National Park, I would already know that there is no gas available there. That means we would be looking for a town close to Sequoia where we could fill up the tank and stock up on groceries and ice.
I would also want to visit a gallery to buy some local art by which to remember our trip, a bookstore for history and hiking guides, a museum, and a gift shop for T-shirts and other souvenirs.
I would have already seen “Three Rivers” on the map as the closest community to Sequoia and would tentatively be planning to stop here. As we exit onto the Highway 198 corridor, however, we would become increasingly more concerned that, sight unseen, Three Rivers might not have the services we would require.
After all, there isn’t one highway sign until after Lemon Cove that even mentions Three Rivers. There are signs that give the mileage to Sequoia National Park, Lake Kaweah, and Lemon Cove.
But no Three Rivers! When Three Rivers does appear on a road sign near the junction of Highway 216 (Woodlake road), it is overshadowed by a huge yellow sign that directs vehicles over 22 feet in length away from Sequoia Park’s Generals Highway and, thus, Three Rivers.
But it would have been way before this point that I became convinced that we would need to stop before taking a chance on Three Rivers. So rather than get caught at the entrance to Sequoia without gas, ice, and more, we most likely would have stopped sooner.
This scenario is repeated on the Highway 65 access route from the south.
Hopefully, community groups are working toward validating Three Rivers as a full-service community by improving state and county road signage.
This would go a long way toward increasing visitation while ensuring that businesses could remain viable and profitable year-round by never losing a single potential customer.
Because of this lifetime of experience, I know that along the Highway 198 corridor — the most used access to Three Rivers — this community is being severely misrepresented or just plain ignored.
Here, on the eve of another busy visitor season, all local business owners should take a trip from Highway 99 to Three Rivers via 198 and look at the route critically through the tourists’ eyes.
If I were planning a camping trip to Sequoia National Park, I would already know that there is no gas available there. That means we would be looking for a town close to Sequoia where we could fill up the tank and stock up on groceries and ice.
I would also want to visit a gallery to buy some local art by which to remember our trip, a bookstore for history and hiking guides, a museum, and a gift shop for T-shirts and other souvenirs.
I would have already seen “Three Rivers” on the map as the closest community to Sequoia and would tentatively be planning to stop here. As we exit onto the Highway 198 corridor, however, we would become increasingly more concerned that, sight unseen, Three Rivers might not have the services we would require.
After all, there isn’t one highway sign until after Lemon Cove that even mentions Three Rivers. There are signs that give the mileage to Sequoia National Park, Lake Kaweah, and Lemon Cove.
But no Three Rivers! When Three Rivers does appear on a road sign near the junction of Highway 216 (Woodlake road), it is overshadowed by a huge yellow sign that directs vehicles over 22 feet in length away from Sequoia Park’s Generals Highway and, thus, Three Rivers.
But it would have been way before this point that I became convinced that we would need to stop before taking a chance on Three Rivers. So rather than get caught at the entrance to Sequoia without gas, ice, and more, we most likely would have stopped sooner.
This scenario is repeated on the Highway 65 access route from the south.
Hopefully, community groups are working toward validating Three Rivers as a full-service community by improving state and county road signage.
This would go a long way toward increasing visitation while ensuring that businesses could remain viable and profitable year-round by never losing a single potential customer.
posted by TKC Online | 8:28 AM
1 Comments:
Except that few who actually live there care for the type of green eyeshade 19th Century middle america boosterism that you constantly push. The fact is the town already got what it wanted once, which was a real estate boom composed of people looking to get away from that junk. The capital sunk into real estate has been made and gone and is now not controlled by those who would benefit from crowds or the infrastructure necessary to support them. Your interest in more advertisers, and advancing the interests of those advertisers, is obvious and maybe even rational for someone in your position. However, that does not make the mythology you print of what it means to live in Three Rivers, past, present, and future -- which really only represents your own views -- equivalent to the controlling reality.
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