Walking into the National Neon Sign Museum in historic downtown The Dalles, Ore., is to be transported to another age.
Dozens of the glowing, glass-tube signs, so prevalent in this country from the 1920s through the 1950s, are on display throughout the venerable, Colonial-style Elks Building.
Its 20,000 square feet make the perfect space to exhibit the once-ubiquitous colorful signage that directed Americans, both rural and urban, where to gas up, buy frozen custard or root beer, purchase prescriptions and film, spend the night, see a movie and more.
“Advertising in this era was at its best,” said David Benko, the museum’s energetic executive director who also serves as tour guide through the labyrinth of the museum’s rooms.
“I have a substantial collection of neon clocks and other point-of-purchase neon advertising. I have always liked petroleum signs. They had great logos…Mobil gas, Flying A. Most of the smaller California companies had spectacular logos.
“A very special sign that we have is Polly Gas (from the Los Angeles-based) Wilshire Oil company.”
Other brands memorialized in neon and on exhibit include Big Bear Drive In, Dawn’s Donuts, Dog n’ Suds, Town Pride Frozen Custard and Greyhound Bus Depot.
The museum, located about 90 minutes east of Portland, opened in 2018 and has become a favorite of passengers on ships that cruise the Columbia River just three blocks away. The typical visitor is of a certain age and will remember neon signs as a fixture of their childhoods, but visitors of every age can enjoy and appreciate these relics of Americana.
Museum visitors see a pre-tour video explaining the art and science of creating neon signs, which are constructed of glass tubes filled with gas. When an electric current passes through the gas, its luminescent properties appear. Neon gas produces a red glow, but other gases also are used: argon (blue or purple); krypton (violet); mercury (blue); hydrogen (purple-red); and helium (yellow or pink-orange).
Meeting Benko, who began acquiring neon signs in the 1980s, was pure happenstance.
While driving from southeast Washington to Hood River, Ore., we decided on a whim to stop in The Dalles (rhymes with “pals”). We called ahead to see if Benko was available. He graciously agreed to usher us through the museum, a generous gesture considering his time-consuming, high engagement in local civic affairs. We also found a surprising connection: His ancestors and my husband’s hail from the same tiny village in eastern Slovakia.
A Washington State native, Benko has collected memorabilia from the first half of the 20th century since he was a kid. He began with telephone and telegraph insulators, gasoline pumps and “early papers and ephemera related to neon.”
Visitors also will find a bigger-than-life Ronald McDonald available for selfies; a replica of a neon-lighted town square, complete with shops and other mid-century artifacts in the historic building’s spring-loaded ballroom; and painted horses that will eventually join others when Benko completes the restoration of a 1920s carousel.
“We have spent the last couple of years wrapping ourselves around this project,” Benko said. “From stripping horses safely, identifying issues with damage and just developing strategies to restore them back to their 1920’s glory. We are taking our time to make the best decision that we can, so that it will still be around in another hundred years.”
Although neon signs lost their appeal in the 1990s, they’ve made a bit of comeback.
“(There) has been a resurgence and I would say that has been a positive thing,” Benko said. “Things ebb and flow; it is all a cycle.”
Today’s signs, however, don’t use neon and other gases; they are made with colored LED lights.
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