09/17/2026
Lady Bird Johnson looked at Texas highways in the 1960s and decided the state deserved better than billboards and bare shoulders. 🌸
As First Lady, she championed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, pushing to limit roadside billboards and junkyards while funding wildflower planting programs across the country. Back home in Texas, she went further, working with the state highway department to seed medians and shoulders with bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and native wildflowers, turning ordinary interstate drives into something worth looking at. Critics at the time dismissed it as a vanity project for a First Lady with too much time on her hands.
Six decades later, Texas highway wildflower season is a genuine springtime tradition, with families still pulling over for photos in fields she had a direct hand in creating. 🚗 Have you ever stopped for a bluebonnet photo along a Texas highway, or is that more of a tradition for other families you know?
