Travelers will soon be greeted by some new signs as they drive into Powell on U.S. Highway 14A.

With the help of state tourism dollars, the Park County Travel Council offered to purchase new gateway signs at the city’s eastern and western ends as part of its efforts to “spiff up the county,” Mayor John Wetzel explained.

The Powell City Council didn’t need any convincing, unanimously agreeing to accept the offer last year.

“I think it’s time to change up the signs,” Councilman Geoff Hovivian said at a December meeting.

Picking a design was a little tougher, with options ranging from a rounded brown-and-gold layout to one featuring a rendering of the Powell High School Panther.

“Obviously it’s probably pretty easy to tell which one I like the best,” quipped Councilman Steve Lensegrav, who serves as the assistant principal at PHS.

However, the majority of the council and city staffers surveyed by City Administrator Zack Thorington liked one that includes a cutout of Heart Mountain.

“Their [the staffers’] only thing with the Panther was, ‘There’s more than just the high school here,’” Thorington relayed. The administrator also disclosed that he’d ruled out a proposed design that featured Cody colors.

“We don’t want that,” Wetzel said at the December meeting.

Last week, the council unanimously settled on a design that includes the Heart Mountain cutout on a rock base. One sign will be constructed on Powell’s west entrance along the highway and the other on the east side entrance to town.

The City of Cody is also getting a pair of new gateway signs — their design reportedly features a buffalo — while two existing ones will be refurbished, Park County Travel Council Executive Director Ryan Hauck said in an interview.

The one outstanding design question is whether the signs will be backlit, as the travel council is still mulling that added expense.

The gateway greetings are part of the board’s two-year effort to revamp local signage. The first phase involved installing new red, white and blue wayfinding signs in Powell, Cody and Meeteetse. Geared toward visitors, the signs in Powell point the way to places like the Park County Fairgrounds, the police station, Northwest College and Southside Park.

Beyond being more aesthetically pleasing and bringing a cohesive look across the county, Hauck said signs can help tourism.

“When people know where they’re going and they feel confident, they just feel better about your destination,” he said. “It also helps get people going to different businesses that they maybe had never considered before.”

Roughly $540,000 was budgeted for the effort over the past two years, Hauck said, with the dollars drawn from the Wyoming Office of Tourism’s Destination Development Program.

The cost included the development of a master signage plan by an outside consultant; the design, construction and installation of business signs, kiosks and nearly 200 wayfinding signs around the county; and the upcoming installation of the six new gateway signs in Powell and Cody.

Hauck said they’ll be in place this year and hopefully by summer.