Things You Won't See at Secret Caverns
Cobleskill, New York
The Evil Clown Billboard, located for many years on Rt. 20 west of Sharon, New York, heralded a New Age of Secret Caverns marketing and ever-more sophisitcated billboard illustrations. Destroyed in the 1990s. Guides Todd DelMarter, Kurt Piller, and Bernie Neumann explained:
Kurt: Our first conceptual work...
Todd: That's a pretty loose interpretation of a sign.
Kurt: We wanted to put all this stuff on the signs throughout the year and RJ [the boss] wouldn't let us, so he let us do one sign where we could put the evil clown and the skeletons, gremlins. That was an end-of-the-summer sign.
Todd: That opened the door for a lot of the other bunk that we do now...
Bernie: And then somebody drove through the sign.
Todd: That was a Howe Caverns employee, wasn't it?
Kurt: No, some guy had a heart attack, went off the road, took out the sign. Which is a damn good ending for a sign...