History

Wendell Prosser spent twenty-nine years with the state highway department processing applications for supplemental guide signs — the brown panels that direct interstate travelers to museums, historic sites, and attractions. Department policy required denied applications to be discarded after seven years; Prosser, by his own account, 'filed them sideways instead.' When he retired in 1989 he took possession of four filing cabinets documenting more than 300 attractions that had sought signage and, for reasons of traffic volume, sight distance, or incomplete paperwork, never received it.

In 1991 Prosser leased a decommissioned rest-area maintenance building on the old alignment near Cardwell Junction from the county for one dollar per year, and opened the museum with the aid of a $61,000 grant from the Tri-County Tourism Readiness Council. The grant had been advertised for 'wayfinding improvements'; the council's minutes acknowledge that a museum concerning the absence of wayfinding 'meets the letter of the application,' and the funds were released after a second reading.

The collection grew steadily through the 1990s as unsigned attractions across the Plains closed and their fixtures came available. Notable acquisitions include the curved information desk of the Marion County Gateway Center, which operated for eleven days in 1987; the entire boxed gift-shop stock of the Prairie Reptile Encounter, which ceased operations twenty-two days before its scheduled ribbon-cutting; and the Brochure Annex, a climate-adjacent room holding an estimated 40,000 rack brochures printed for attractions that no longer exist, sorted by state and degree of optimism.

The museum suffered its principal setback in June 1998, when a hailstorm destroyed the skylight above the Brochure Annex and water-damaged approximately 1,200 brochures. Rather than discard them, staff installed them in a long glass case labeled 'Water-Damaged Brochures,' which visitor surveys now identify as the museum's most photographed exhibit. The museum's own application for a supplemental guide sign, filed in 1994, remains listed as pending; the application is framed beside the entrance, next to a smaller frame reserved for the decision.

Local Legends

Visitors persistently claim that somewhere in the Brochure Annex is a brochure for this museum itself, printed before it opened and describing exhibits it has never had. Staff neither confirm the brochure's existence nor assist in locating it.

It is said around Cardwell Junction that Prosser personally processed the denials of at least three of the museums now exhibited. Prosser has described this figure as 'high.'

Some residents maintain that the directional arrows painted in the museum's parking lot point the wrong way, and have maintained this since 1992. The county engineer's office has twice measured the arrows and reports that they meet specification.

The Controversy

In 1999 the state highway department raised concerns that the museum's display of decommissioned official signage — including two retired brown guide-sign panels — could constitute unauthorized reproduction of traffic control devices. The matter was resolved by memorandum of understanding requiring each panel to carry a small sticker reading 'NOT IN SERVICE,' the placement of which took two site visits to agree upon.

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