In the Fifth Century hordes of Germanic people called Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain and in A.D. 455 sacked Rome destroying untold quantities of property. In our enlightened age some have called those people barbarians. Today, in our own time, what do we call the vandals who overrun Utah’s highways and rest stops, destroying their own property public property which costs thousands of dollars of tax money to replace? What kind of property and damage’? Highway signs shot full of holes, stolen, or ruined with spray paint; heavy gauge steel doors to rest stop storage areas battered or torn off ; toilets and other plumbing smashed or tom from the walls. lt’s no wonder maintenance crews of the Utah Department of Transportation get discouraged at, the vandalism they see. “It surely makes you sick,” says Carl L. Corbin, traffic engineer at the six – county District 6 Headquarters in Orem, “when you’ve just put up a new road sign then drive by a little later to find it’s been shattered.” Mr. Corbin, who works under Edwin E. Lovelace, district director for DOT, says the road sign vandalism is dangerous to the driving public as well as costly. Oft-times signs are so multilated with shots or mined with paint that they cannot be read by motorists depending upon them. For example a sign waming of a “curve” may have been “dereflectorized”by vandals to the point it cannot be read at night. One maintenance station foreman quoted by the Department of Transportations own publication, “Center Line,” spoke of some of the cruder forms of vandalism: “Why would anybody want to mess on the floor or smear dirt all over the walls when there are perfectly good fixtures provided? When you send men out on this kind of cleanup job you can just feel them cringe at the thought of it.” Drinking fountain faucets, unbelievably, seem to be especially vandal-prone. ”1 think some people get mad when they arrive at a rest stop and are inconvenienced by the handiwork of previous vandals, so they just knock off the faucets to vent their anger,” the maintenance foreman said. DOT officials told of a maintenance operations engineer discovering water gushing from under the door of the restroom at the Orem rest area on I-15 and found a toilet in the women’s restroom had been broken off the wall. The foreman of a Cedar City station in District 5 wrote, after one spree of vandalism: ”… a urinal was ripped from the wall and destroyed. A partition was kicked out and bent out of shape. The wall sink had been used as a toilet Mirrors were broken and floor tile was chipped and broken It costs the highway department $1850 a month just to “keep things cleaned up” at a rest stop at endover, a 1976 DOT report said. Fires have been started in trash cans in some areas, picnic tables broken into kindling wood, “anything and everything shot,” and camper and trailer holding tanks emptied into trash cans, according to “Center Line.” Remember, all these facilities belong to you, the taxpayers. They have been installed for public convenience, largely at Utah expense. Yes, “hordes” of vandals would appear to be at large today. Undoubtedly most folks who use the public facilities are respectful, law – abiding citizens. Hopefully it’s a small minority who become animals and turn destructive when they feel themselves unobserved. What’s the answer to the problem? Highway officials have warned that budget problems threaten to curtai maintenance work required to clean up behind a careless public. Priorities must be observed. In effect, if the people want full maintenance of highway signs and clean well kept rest areas they’ll have to cut the vandalizing. How to bring this about is everybody’s challenge.