Few pictures capture the rift between local conservative Washingtonians and the hippie invasion attracted by Evergreen more than a photo taken by Felicity Scott Hutsell in 1987.

Felicity told me about the day she took that photo: “A friend of mine was driving South on I-5 and saw this hilarious billboard on the side of the road. He told me about it when he got back to town. We were both students at the Evergreen State College, and we thought it was a hoot. As soon as he told me about it, I decided to drive down myself to take a picture.” 

This was the infamous Hamilton Farms billboard, renowned for right-wing slogans posted alongside an image of Uncle Sam, and located next to the I-5 freeway in rural Lewis County. On this particular day, the message was, “Evergreen State College–Home of Environmental Terrorists and Homos?” Once Felicity and her friend stopped laughing, she knew this was an iconic photograph that she needed to take.

Originally from Spokane, Felicity moved first to Seattle and then to Olympia in 1983 to attend Evergreen. The move was easy because her brother David Scott was already there, and she was drawn to Evergreen as a non-traditional school. “There was a saying back then, ‘Question Authority,’ and it seemed that’s what Evergreen was all about. I liked that,” Felicity said. 

For many students, questioning authority meant challenging the entire status quo and for some, it also meant becoming activists. All that questioning and activism was unnerving to the surrounding community, where 1950s conformity was still the social norm thirty years later. This Lewis County billboard articulated stereotypes of Evergreen held by many conservatives.Felicity had high hopes for her photo. “I planned to submit it to the Cooper Point Journal (CPJ) because I thought all the other students would see the irony and get a big laugh out of it. But when I went into the CPJ office, I was disappointed to learn they already had a photo of the billboard and had run a story from a political angle. I thought that approach totally missed the irony. It was really funny, and I knew that the humor would speak to the entire student body.”

Undaunted, Felicity moved to Plan B: creating a postcard and finding a printer. The card featured the billboard image on the front with a caption on the back:  

Next, she figured out how to sell it. Felicity recalled, “I made a bunch of postcards and had the image copyrighted. Then I went around town to find places to sell it, like the Spar and a couple other little shops. It was selling pretty well, so I thought, ‘Why not ask the Evergreen Bookstore on campus to carry it?’ I was not expecting the response I got from the manager, who was all over it. He told me it was an iconic shot and that he was sure that the postcard would sell as long as there were Greeners in the world.” 

For the next thirty years, the postcard did sell quite well. Especially around graduation time when students and their families gathered mementos of their college days in the Pacific Northwest. However, in recent years, things changed, and the joke was no longer as relevant. 

Wistfully, Felicity shared that, “About five years ago, the Evergreen Bookstore stopped selling the postcard.” For whatever reason, this light-hearted postcard from the past no longer resonated with the student body. 

While the world has changed and political divisions seem deeper than ever, there are still plenty of Greeners who get the joke and delight in the irony. Many of us still laugh aloud at the ridiculous fears and stereotypes that inspired a rural billboard in Lewis County in 1987. Since its founding, Evergreen has churned out quite a few radicals. However, many more students went on to become reformers, intent on making their communities more welcoming places for all. They went on to work as teachers, business owners, government workers and health care providers, among other occupations. Each took what they learned at Evergreen, working to make their communities better places to live, including those in Lewis County. Hopefully, we still have a sense of humor.