Bob Ross Signs Are ‘Sprucing Up’ Michigan’s State Parks

The late painter Bob Ross is leaving his legacy for a whole new generation to see as Michigan’s state parks will feature his name and likeness on signs outside each park.

The green signs show Bob Ross’s catchphrase “Happy Little Trees” with an image of his likeness, and they are part of the state’s massive reforestation efforts program.

The signs are currently perched outside Port Crescent State Park, Yankee Springs Recreation Area, and Orchard Beach State Park. The state plans to place additional signs outside Ludington State Park, Sleeper State Park, and Warren Dunes State Park.

Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Bob Ross Inc. created a partnership earlier in the year to build a program where the state’s prison inmates would grow saplings that volunteers would later plant in the state’s parks. To honor Ross, they named the program “Happy Little Trees.”

The program has allowed more than 1,000 trees to be planted at Michigan’s state parks over the summer, M Live reported.

Michelle Coss, DNR fund and resource development specialist, said the idea to come up with the revamped prison inmate program was done in part to celebrate the state park system’s centennial.

“We were talking about the prison grow program, and somehow ‘happy little trees’ came up,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if we reached out to Bob Ross Inc. and asked if we could use that moniker for the program?’ So we did, and they loved it.”

Bob Ross Inc. gave the green light for the program to operate, and when the state put out the call for volunteers in the spring, more than 400 people signed up than in previous years.

The t-shirts for the volunteers, which read “Happy Little Trees,” grew so popular that a Michigan apparel company called Peninsulas picked up the catchphrase and offered to give a portion of the sales from the shirts back to the Happy Little Trees program.

“I put Bob Ross in the same category as Mister Rogers: You can’t not like Mister Rogers. You can’t not like Bob Ross,” said Robert Jameson, co-owner of Peninsulas. “I’m sure if [Ross] were alive today, he’d be very happy to be associated with this program.”