Brent Logan, YESCO Restore Iconic Nevada Motel Sign

For more than 50 years, the cowboy on Fallon, NV’s Lariat Motel sign tossed his neon lasso at passing motorists on U.S. Hwy 50. This section of road was once part of the Lincoln Highway, and, before that, the Pony Express Trail. Years ago, Life Magazine called Hwy. 50 in Nevada “the loneliest road in America”. After having driven the long stretch of desert, it was a thrill to see the neon lights of Fallon! (Editor’s Note: At the National Signage Research & Education Conference, which took place October 9-10 in Cincinnati, two Univ. of Cincinnati professors recounted their travels across the 3,073-mile expanse of Hwy. 50, for which they documented more than 4,000 signs along the route. Read about it at www.thesignagefoundation.org.)

The Lariat Motel sign had been a fixture on Hwy. 50’s visual landscape since the early 1950s, when it was first installed in front of the motel at 850 W. Williams Ave. The 18-room motel was a popular rest stop for travelers. It’s hosted several interesting people over the years, such as the crew from the 1961 Marilyn Monroe movie, The Misfits, and pilots from the nearby Naval Air Station’s Top Gun program.

The double-sided Lariat Motel sign was designed in a typical, post-war style. From a cloud-shaped cabinet on one end, a Western cowboy, astride a horse, threw his lasso toward the adjacent panel that displayed the motel’s name. The cowboy’s neon arm and lasso lit up in a dynamic, three-step animation, moving from behind his head, then forward, and ended with the golden lariat capturing the name panel. It was a neon classic that caught everyone’s attention!

An icon saved
In 2005, the motel was torn down to make room for a commercial development, and a 50-year land-
mark was gone. Fortunately, local citizens rescued the sign, and donated it to the Churchill County Arts Council (CAC) for future installation at Fallon’s Oats Park Art Center. The sign was taken down and placed in storage until funds could be secured for its renovation.

Originally built as a schoolhouse in 1914, The Oats Park Art Center has been transformed by the Churchill County Arts Council into an elegant, visual-arts gallery, 305-seat theater and urban-café style bar. After a series of community meetings, Fallon officials determined a renovation of the historic Oats Park School building might be the best way to meet community needs. CAC successfully nominated the structure to the National Register of Historic Places in the early 1990s, and construction and renovation began in late 1995. To date, more than $5.5 million has been raised for the renovation.

As plans for the renovation evolved, an outdoor courtyard/performance area was added at the south end of the building. Kirk Robertson, Oats Park Art Center’s program director, said, “In 2005, when the chance to acquire the Lariat sign surfaced, people determined the sign would make a great entryway to the outdoor courtyard.”

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Earlier this year, CAC received funding for the sign restoration from the Nevada Commission on Tourism. Robertson then contacted Mark Stevens, Young Electric Sign Co.’s (YESCO) account executive for its Reno branch, to discuss the sign’s restoration and installation at the Art Center. YESCO’s bid proposal was approved, and the sign was transported 60 miles west to YESCO’s Reno facility.

Design fundamentals
I previously worked for YESCO as a staff designer, and I was called upon to repaint Carson City, NV’s historic Cactus Jack casino sign a few years ago. Because of my signpainting skills, Karen Munson, YESCO Reno’s sales manager, hired me to repaint the Lariat Motel sign and redesign parts of the pictorial. I was thrilled at the opportunity to be involved in this historic restoration, and began digging out my brushes!

Although the sign’s neon tubes were in good shape, the original paint was in poor condition. The sections of the cowboy and horse pictorial were partially peeled away, and the underlying sheetmetal was exposed. After 50 years in the Nevada sun, the remaining paint was so badly faded, determining the original colors was difficult. Unfortunately, high-quality reference photos of the sign weren’t available. I discussed this problem with Robertson, and he allowed me some liberty in the design process. My challenge was to choose appropriate colors and create a new desert-background scene.

I began by taking digital photos of both sides of the sign. Then, I began my design by importing one of the photos into CorelDRAW X4 software.

Using the Bezier drawing tool, I traced over the cowboy, horse, letters and sign panel. Because much of the pictorial background had eroded from the original sign, I drew new desert imagery behind the figures. Using the uniform-fill tool, I colored in the vector shapes I had drawn. I used the Pantone (PMS) color palette for my fills, because it would coordinate with the 1Shot® color-mixing system used by YESCO. This would save time with color mixing later during the painting stage.

Once I’d finished the vector drawing, I added some hand-drawn shading to a printed copy, then scanned the image and imported it onto YESCO’s design template for final customer approval.

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Setting the pattern
The next restoration stage was making a paper pattern from the weathered signfaces. This is critical to the process. The painted letters and figures made from this pattern must accurately align with the existing neon tubes and supports.

On the areas where the paint had peeled, I drew around the neon with a black marker. This gave me an image to trace over after the neon was removed. We decided to keep the glass tube supports and housings on the sign faces during the painting process. This would alleviate much frustration during reassembly.

After the YESCO crew removed the neon tubing, I traced the pattern. For the pattern paper to lie flush to the signfaces, I cut small holes in the paper to allow the tube supports to push through. The heavy butcher paper was opaque, so I resorted to the old signpainters’ trick of wiping the paper with mineral spirits to make it translucent. After having traced the faces with a pencil, I went over the lines with a pounce wheel, which makes tiny perforations in the outline. Later, I laid this perforated pattern back onto the sign and dusted it with powdered charcoal to reestablish the outline of the signface images.

Painting time
The YESCO crew began surface preparation on the cabinet and sign faces. The peeling areas were scraped with a putty knife, and the entire surface was smoothed with an orbital sander. In many places, the paint was sanded down to bare sheetmetal. After its surface was cleaned, it was brought into YESCO’s paint booth and sprayed with Nason self-etching, automotive primer. The primer was allowed to dry for several days, and YESCO moved the sign back to the shop floor.

After I made a list of the Pantone colors used in my design drawing, I began mixing paint using Spraylat’s 1Shot Field Master paint-matching system. I approximated color quantities by square footage. The two largest surface areas were the brown background and returns of the word-panel cabinet, and the blue sky and returns of the cloud cabinet that contained the pictorial.

We decided to paint all surfaces with brushes and rollers. We believed the sign had probably been originally painted in this traditional manner. YESCO added 1Shot’s 4007 hardener to all colors to improve gloss and longevity. On areas to be brush-painted, I added 1-Shot high-temp reducer and Penetrol® paint conditioner to reduce viscosity.

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I began by painting the blue returns on the cloud-shaped cabinet with a roller. The brown returns on the word-panel cabinet were similarly painted. Next, I painted the blue sky and clouds on both sides, and then I hand-sketched and painted the Western mountains and desert landscape. I painted a white basecoat onto the word-panel faces and left it to dry. I then placed the pounce patterns of the horse, cowboy and “Lariat Motel” lettering back on the faces and dusted them with powdered charcoal.

I painted the horse’s base colors and cowboy, and brushed on pictorial shading. The word-panel lettering was cut in with brown paint and a brush over the white background.

I painted larger areas with a 3-in., short-nap roller. I allowed the brown to dry overnight, and the second coat was applied the next day. For the final stage, I outlined the cowboy and horse with a #10 Mack lettering quill.

Because the glass-tube supports had been exposed and primed, I painted them with color as well; this proved time-consuming. The entire painting process (not including prep) took approximately eight days using ladders and an electric scissor lift to reach the upper areas.

Neon repair and installation
Once the enamel had cured, the YESCO crew was ready to reinstall the neon. Even though the sign had been in storage for eight years, almost all of the glass had survived and was in good working condition. Only one piece (a section of the cowboy’s arm) had to be replaced. Various colors of 15mm Voltarc and Tecnolux luminous tubing had been used to outline the figures and lettering. The threaded-glass supports around the cowboy and horse were set at various depths to allow some of the multi-colored tubes to overlap.

YESCO placed the electrodes back into the glass housings and reattached the tubes to the supports with copper wire. Voltarc green tubing was used to outline the Lariat script and Voltarc rose to spell “Motel”. The horse was outlined in tangerine, with his mane and tail rendered in snow white. The saddle, halter and stirrups comprise ruby-red glass. The cowboy outline was a combination of clear red and blue tubing with warm white to create the skin tones. The animated lasso sections comprise Tecnolux gold tubing.

After YESCO reinstalled the neon, they plugged in and tested the electronics. All five of the original, internally mounted transformers operated, and the sign came back to life!

When the three-part, animated lasso sequence began, I noticed something odd. When one section illuminated, I assumed the preceding section was supposed to turn off. Somehow, the old, motor-driven flasher allowed the first two lasso sections to remain illuminated when the final section lit up. I contacted the customer about my concern. A new, three-point flasher was installed, and the lasso animation now worked properly. At last, the refurbished sign was ready to travel to its new home for installation.

Engineering and permitting
We planned to install the newly refurbished sign in front of the gated entryway to Oats Park Art Center’s outdoor courtyard. Visitors would walk underneath the sign as they entered the steps down to the courtyard/performance area.

The sign had originally been supported by two, 8-in.-diameter, round-steel poles. When the concrete walkway was poured in 2010, builders set 1-in., threaded-anchor rods in the slab to hold two, 7/8-in.-thick, steel plates for future sign installation. They planned for new, 8-in. poles to be welded to the plates.

Fallon required stamped engineering drawings to issue a permit for the freestanding sign. YESCO permit and survey specialist Gil Sanchez encountered some challenges in obtaining original foundation drawings. Sanchez contacted the city’s building official to discuss requirements for a sign permit using the existing foundation poured at the Churchill Arts Council building.

“The city determined Fallon’s building department didn’t do the original inspections on the foun-
dations,” Sanchez said. “Because the county owns the Arts Council’s building, we approached the county building inspector to see if any existing drawing foundations were on file. They were initially unable to locate any drawings of the footing design. The footings had been inspected more than three years ago.

After some searching, the inspector located and sent sketches. I forwarded them to Carl Meyers, a YESCO engineer, to create a blueprint. He surveyed the Lariat Motel sign as it was being repainted, and scheduled a visit to the site to confirm that the sketch’s dimensions were accurate.”

He continued, “The Churchill Arts Council initially wanted the bottom part of the sign to be installed at 25 ft. to grade. It was determined during the engineering process that the existing footings limited the overall sign height. The changes required increasing the size of the base plates, and limited the sign’s overall height.”

YESCO’s engineers changed the size of the existing 1 ft. 4 in. x 1 ft. 4 in. x 7/8-in. base plates to thicker, 1¼-in.-thick steel. New poles telescoped 5/8 in. into the new baseplates, and YESCO secured them to existing anchor rods. They determined the sign’s maximum overall height would be 25 ft. 3 in., and the bottom of the sign was set at 14 ft. to grade. The cabinet measures 11 ft. 3 in. x 20 ft. 2½ in.

Installation
The interior structure of the sign had originally been fabricated with vertical and horizontal sections of angle iron. Sheetmetal stiffeners had been added for stability, and the outer skin was sheetmetal. To keep the sign upright and protect the neon during storage and travel, a length of I-beam had been welded to the two, cut-off pole sections when it was removed from its original location in 2005. Channel iron had been welded to the base of the I-beam to allow the sign to stand. This made it easy to secure it to a flatbed trailer for its trip to Fallon.

At the jobsite, the YESCO crew set the new poles onto the existing footings. Contractors had previously run electrical service in PVC conduit under one of the footings. The sign required two, 20-amp circuits to power the exposed neon.

No lift pick existed on the sign; it may have originally been installed in two sections. This required the installers to remove the top access panels and attach web slings to the inner frame to secure it for lifting. Next, the cabinets were disconnected from the original pole sections, and it was ready to be lifted off the trailer.

Using a Manitex 169-ft.-reach crane, installers lifted the cabinet high into the air and guided it onto the new poles. The poles had been spaced at 9 ft. 3.25 in. on center to align with the old sign’s existing inner sleeves. The cabinet slid on easily and rested level on the horizontal sections of angle iron inside the sign. While the cabinet was still supported by the crane, two crew members welded the poles to the inner frame from an 80-ft., Elliott bucket truck. Next, YESCO attached the wiring and painted the new poles satin-black with Ace Hardware paint to match the iron fence surrounding the courtyard.

Installation attracted a crowd; Fallon residents loved the sight of a local icon being brought back to life. The city planned an official lighting ceremony on October 25, which was Nevada Day, a state holiday. City officials, important dignitaries and the press were on hand to celebrate the Lariat sign’s rebirth. Rarely does one have an opportunity to work on such a project. I was honored to help restore this vintage piece of Americana; it was truly a labor of love.
 

Equipment and Materials
Lifts: High-reach crane, from Manitex (Georgetown, TX), (877) 314-3390 or www.manitex.com; Bucket lift, from Elliott (Omaha, NE), (402) 592-4500 or www.elliottequip.com; Scissor lift, from such providers as JLG (McConellsburg, PA), (877) 554-5438 or www.jlg.com
Neon: Various colors of 15mm luminous tubing, from Tecnolux (The Bronx, NY), (718) 369-3900 or www.tecnolux.com, and Voltarc (Orange, CT), (203) 799-7877 or www.light-sources.com  
Paint: 1Shot® lettering enamel, color-mixing system, hardener and high-temp reducer, from One Shot LLC (Chicago), (773) 646-2778 or www.1shot.com; acrylic-latex paint, available from hardware stores.
Software: CorelDRAW X4, from Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON, Canada), www.corel.com