Wichita Falls Creatively Covers Traffic Signal Boxes While Fort Worth Creatively Clutters

I had not driven many miles in Wichita Falls before noticing pagoda like structures at various stop lighted intersections.

I think, maybe, the first pagoda like structure I made note of was not at a lighted intersections, but was instead in Lucy Park.

I have yet to learn the purpose of the Lucy Park pagoda like structure, or why Lucy Park is so named.

I Googled and Binged Lucy Park last night seeking an answer to the Lucy mystery, to no avail. I did find there is a doctor in town named Lucy Tan, but I doubt Dr. Tan is the reason for the Lucy Park name.

Speaking of Lucy Park, the pagoda like structure you see below is at the intersection one takes a right or left on to make ones way to the Lucy Park entry. The pagoda like structure above is closer to downtown Wichita Falls, near an abandoned Arby's.

It was via a Facebook exchange with the renowned Odessan Master Surveyor, Andy Nold, I learned what the pagoda like structures were...

Andy Nold I find WF's creative traffic signal box covers to be pretty interesting. I spent ten years there one summer.

Like · Reply · May 11 at 4:15pm

Durango Jones Andy Nold Now I must find these creative traffic signal boxes of which you speak. I am a little concerned about the coming summer. I hope it does not seem like ten years....

Like · Reply · May 11 at 4:23pm

Andy Nold https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m6!1e1!3m4... Here's a clue to one. They're all over the city. Great way to camoflage what is otherwise visual clutter.

Wichita Falls

Wichita Falls, TX 76309

GOOGLE.COM

Like · Reply · Remove Preview · May 11 at 4:55pm

Durango Jones I have seen these pagoda like structures and wondered what they were. There is a tall pagoda like structure in Lucy Park with no explanation as to what it is.

Like · Reply · May 11 at 4:58pm

So, the pagoda like structures are camouflaging traffic signal box covers.

Well.

Yet one more thing about Wichita Falls that has impressed me.

Recently the town and county I lived in prior to moving to the Texas Panhandle Plains zone began a bizarre attempt to make prettier box covers at intersections.

From what I saw of the Fort Worth and surrounding Tarrant County box covers the effort seemed to create more visual clutter than it alleviated. Whoever came up with that bizarre way to waste money should have just kept with one innocuous design, like the wildflower longhorn cover I saw a couple instances of.

Instead I saw covers with John Wayne pointing a gun at me and other oddities which seemed like distracting visual litter.

I recollect blogging about the Fort Worth traffic box wraps, including one blogging with a photo of the one I saw most frequently, that being at the intersection of  Bridge and Bridgewood in far east Fort Worth.

I had trouble finding that particular post with that particular photo, but eventually I found Early Texas Voting At Fort Worth Library Thwarted Today Before Up Close Inspection Of New Art. Before I found that I found I'd first blogged about this "art" fiasco way back when I first heard about it in 2015, in a blogging titled Fort Worth Public Artfully Wraps Ugly Except For Outhouses.

In addition to creatively covering traffic signal boxes, unlike the town I previously resided in, Wichita Falls does an excellent job of landscaping its freeway exits and road intersections, like the two examples you see above.

Wichita Falls also does an excellent job with its Welcome to Wichita Falls installations one sees from the various freeways which enter this town.

The town I previously lived in has no Welcome to Fort Worth installations at any of the freeway entries to the town. Fort Worth does not even landscape the freeway exits to the town's only tourist attraction that has any sort of traction in the collective national consciousness, that being the Fort Worth Stockyards.

Maybe, if the I-35W upgrade is ever completed, part of that upgrade will be to landscape the two freeway exits to the Stockyards, replacing the weed covered littered mess that still greeted tourists when I last saw that location....