Remembering the “Walldogs”: Rediscovering the Art of Hand-Painted Wall Murals

By Ken Klein

As a first-time visitor to The Dalles (rhymes with gals), I learned plenty . . . and overcame my semantic confusion with Dallas, Texas.

The Dalles is French for trough or narrows in the nearby Columbia River. The region is a cherry capital. And, people of The Dalles speak admiringly about a skill that I had long forgotten: outdoor sign painting by artists called “walldogs.”

I am from the Midwest. A college friend, Dale Keiger, had mentioned that his dad was a walldog sign painter in Cincinnati after World War II. Walldogs, Dale explained, were skilled artisans who hand-painted signs on buildings. Why are they called walldogs? Because they paint walls and work like dogs, tethered to buildings. This risky profession, like most of the walldogs’ large-format signs, all but disappeared. Neon and printed vinyl replaced hand-painted signs; redevelopment knocked out old brick buildings.

My trip to The Dalles revealed to me that walldogs and their stunning murals — like a Buddy Holly song — did not fade away. Volunteer walldogs converge on towns like The Dalles, reviving the craft of hand-painting signs. Their stunning, eye-catching murals illustrate history, entice tourists, and enhance the business climate.

Nationwide, artists are painting commercial and public-service wall signs. After my wall-art discovery in The Dalles, I began to notice large-scale painted art everywhere.

Eye-opening trip to The Dalles

My wife, Susan, and I visited The Dalles in June of 2025, the height of the cherry season. Fresh-picked sweet cherries can be addicting in the same way Cheez-its bend my will to safeguard against excess consumption. In The Dalles, locals politely explain the laxative power of cherries. Don’t eat too many, they caution; ten at a time is enough.

Hand-painted wall murals are omnipresent in The Dalles, including this high-contrast salute to the region’s “world famous cherries.”

The cherries mural was hand-painted by walldogs during a mural festival in 2022 in The Dalles, 80 miles east of Portland along the Columbia River (population 15,884 in 2024). An organized group of sign painters called The Walldogs selects a community each year for a multi-day mural-painting festival. In three decades, nearly 500 walldogs have painted 665 murals in 30 towns. The movement started in Allentown, Iowa. The Dalles was among the first towns in the West to host a Mural Fest; walldogs painted fifteen murals here August 24-28, 2022.

Some 250 local volunteers helped by cleaning brushes, delivering food, and more. As a host community, The Dalles bought the paint and fed and housed visiting sign painters from across the country and beyond. Artist Ross Hastie from Scotland, who joined the Walldogs in 2018, has painted murals in Oregon, Illinois, Florida, and elsewhere. “I’m a pretty average 24-year-old from a pretty average town in Scotland, and I’ve been so many places I would have never otherwise been,” Hastie told WUFT Public Media when he participated in a mural fest in High Springs, Florida, in 2023. “We get right in the community, which I much prefer.”

In The Dalles, local citizens selected wall sites to be painted and mural content that would tell the story of their river town. The community raised funds to offset costs, including support from Google, which operates a data center campus in The Dalles.

The artworks depict people and events key to local history, including mural text that explains how The Dalles got its name from early French Canadians:

“The grandes Dalles (long narrows) and petit Dalles (short narrows) were considered two of the most treacherous rapids on the Columbia River. A footpath circumvented the rapids, followed by a portage railroad and the 1915 Dalles Celilo Canal first direct water link between the middle and upper river. The Dalles Dam, built at the foot of the Grande Dalles, inundated the rapids, canal, and Celilo Falls when it went into operation in March 1957.”

Murals showcase the vibrant Chinese community, Northwest Cattle King Ben Snipes, Eleanor Borg, who taught dance and horseback riding, Chief Tommy Thompson, who opposed The Dalles Dam project, and others. “Accessible history beautifully presented gives all who view it a sense of belonging to this community,” says local historian Lynn Wilcox. School kids and visitors tour the murals, learning history.

“Murals give a vitality and identity to The Dalles. They are big, creative, colorful, and relevant,” says Chris Zukin of Meadow Outdoor Advertising, based in The Dalles.

Irony alert

I’m a sucker for irony. In The Dalles, a beautiful downtown building that once housed the Elks fraternal order is home of the National Neon Sign Museum, operated by David and Kirsten Belko. The rise of neon signs coincided with the retreat of hand-painted signs. Now, neon signs are showcased in a museum where the Elks once imbibed. The folks running the neon museum are also stalwarts for hand-painted murals in The Dalles. “The murals honor the humble legacy of individuals who are found in every community —the pillars of strength and vision — often the unsung heroes and foundation of a region,” says David Belko of the National Neon Sign Museum.

The Belkos, Wilcox, Zukin, and other local leaders worked closely with City Hall to sponsor the Mural Fest and promote the hand-painted signs. Explorethedalles.com offers a tour map of the murals, now 33 in total.

A symbol of unity

Amid division and partisanship (Oregon is both red and blue politically), wall murals and the Mural Fest have been unifying. Artists worked with business types, who worked with historians and City Hall. Building owners signed leases to allow hand-painted art on their exterior walls. The Dalles Mayor Rich Mays touts the sustained dividends of wall murals.

The 2027 Walldogs Mural Festival is slated for Cottage Grove, Oregon (population 10,690 in 2024). Representatives from Cottage Grove visited The Dalles after Mayor Mays pitched the benefits of the Walldog Mural Festival in The Dalles held in 2022. The year 2027 is important for Cottage Grove because it is the 50th anniversary of filming the hit movie Animal House in the fall of 1977. The homecoming parade scene in Animal House was filmed in Cottage Grove, located south of Eugene, Oregon.

Walldogs will be ready to paint murals that celebrate the history and attributes of Cottage Grove… and then they’ll travel to other towns with unique stories to tell via beautiful wall murals.

Up next

The 2026 Walldog Mural Festival is in Menomonie, Wisconsin, a small town that derives its name from a Native American word for wild rice.  The town’s name — like The Dalles — will be explained on a painted wall mural.

Large-format art

The connection between American art and large-format outdoor painting is longstanding. Pop Art pioneer James Rosenquist started as a sign painter in Minnesota and New York. His autobiography (Painting Below Zero), published a photo on Page 48 of a wall mural with this caption: “I painted this Cadillac on the outside of an auto shop in Minneapolis, 1958.” Another Rosenquist photo caption, on Page 53: “My sign for The Visit on the side of the Morosco Theater on Forty-fifth Street. The theater was torn down in 1982.”

Ghosts of the past

The march of time and the advance of large-scale printing technologies made hand painting seem inefficient, the horse-and-buggy of signage.

In 2014, my college colleague Dale Keiger wrote a tribute to his walldog dad in Cincinnati Magazine. “Throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Chuck Keiger was one of the most prolific sign men in the city,” Dale wrote. “My father signed Cincinnati.”

Faded hand-painted signs from past generations — Coca-Cola once had thousands of them — are called “ghost signs.” Lead helps preserve the vintage paint. I spotted a ghost sign in downtown Cleveland in late August, while walking to a Guardians baseball game.

Americana

I remembered that Dale’s dad had painted signs at the old baseball stadium in Cincinnati, Crosley Field, including the scoreboard.

Hand-painted signs are a form of Americana, and they’re coming back.

Dale, wrapping up his published tribute to his father, said he lives in Baltimore. Shortly after rereading his magazine article, I was driving on O’Donnell Street in the Brewer’s Hill section of Baltimore. A painted wall sign features hamburgers on one side of the street. On the other side of the street, the Canton Vision Center’s painted sign mimics an eye-exam chart.

South of Baltimore, Dorchester County (Maryland) attracts visitors to see a hand-painted mural of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who rescued enslaved people. The 3-D mural (28 feet by 14 feet) was painted by Michael Rosato directly on a cinder block wall.

Our son lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where a giant wall mural near the Schuylkill River recalls its iron-and-steel history. In Indianapolis, a wall mural features basketball star Caitlin Clark.

In Pittsburgh, iconic Rosie the Riveter keeps an eye on the street below from her wall mural. Students in New Orleans created wall mural art at the site of a Hurricane Katrina levee breach, two decades after the tragedy.

In August, Sandusky, Ohio, celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the film Tommy Boy starring Chris Farley. Wall murals were a much-photographed feature.

“Always hand paint”

New York is a mecca for electronic and vinyl signage; some 50 million people visit Times Square each year. Two decades ago in Brooklyn, a company was created with an auspicious name — Colossal Media — and a declarative motto: Always hand paint.

Several years later, The Wall Street Journal took note: “Contrary to popular belief, New York’s most spectacular art isn’t hanging at the Museum of Modern Art or at the Met. It adorns the sides of buildings in some of the city’s more interesting neighborhoods.” Much of it was hand-painted by Colossal Media.

This published discovery — that spectacular art appears on walls outside museums — was perhaps foreshadowing my eye-opening trip to find wall art in The Dalles, Oregon. Like art inside museums, wall art celebrates our history and creativity.

Walldogs, I learned, is a term of respect and even affection. They toil outdoors, unify communities, and create art in the public space. No tickets or appointments are required to see their work.

From Brooklyn to The Dalles, Oregon, hand-painted signs are part of our culture, our cityscape, and our storytelling.

Ken Klein is a contributor to PetaPixel and advisor to Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication. He worked for The Associated Press and Gannett in Florida, and for congressional staff and a national trade association in Washington, DC.