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NARRATOR
Carroll Shaddock
Region:
Coastal Prairie
Topics: Trees, Billboards, Planning
Mr. Shaddock is
a corporate attorney in Houston who has volunteered his time for
many years in working to improve the beauty and order of the urban
environment, chiefly through planting street trees and controlling
billboards.
With his interest in city
trees, he helped form the non-profit,
Trees For
Houston, in 1983. In the years since, the group has
planted, irrigated, and monitored over 215,000 trees throughout the
city, lending shade, oxygen and beauty to Houston. The trees
include close to 30 species, including canopy trees such as Bur
Oaks, Live Oaks, Overcup Oaks, Monterey Oaks, Mexican Sycamores for
open areas, as well as understory trees, such as Mexican Plums,
Texas Mountain Laurels, Wax Myrtles, and others for restricted areas
under power lines.
Concerned over billboards'
garishness and traffic hazard, Mr. Shaddock also founded a Houston
organization known as Billboards Limited, which succeeded in banning
all new billboards in the city in 1980, and eventually evolved
into Scenic Houston,
part of a strong national network of like-minded groups under the
umbrella of Scenic America.
Scenic Houston has remained active in seeking to speed removal and
control relocation and enlargement of the remaining off-premise
signs.
Interviewed
February 29, 2008
Houston, Texas
Reels 2425, 2426, and 2427
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