Pitt County, NC Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Section 22 of Planning & Development Services Ordinance No. 7 draws a hard line between freeways and other highways. Subsection A states flatly that outdoor advertising signs are prohibited on freeways, defined in Section 1 as divided arterial highways for through traffic with full control of access. Subsection B allows outdoor advertising signs along all other highways, but only within five hundred feet of a commercial or industrial activity that has frontage and direct access to the highway, and, at intersections, only on the same corner as the business the sign advertises.

Section 5 further limits the ordinance's reach to signs intended to be seen from the highway within one thousand feet of the right-of-way on each side. Signs that clear the freeway ban and the other-highway location rules still face the numeric standards set out later in the ordinance: a 400-square-foot maximum sign face (Section 24), a 35-foot height limit measured from the ground (Section 25), a 20-foot maximum vertical and 40-foot maximum horizontal face dimension (Section 26), a 500-foot separation from any residence, church, school, or public institution (Section 27), a graduated setback of 20 to 50 feet from the right-of-way depending on sign area (Section 28), and a 1,000-foot spacing requirement from any other outdoor advertising sign (Section 23).

S. 153A-121, and a sign permit from the County Building Inspections Department is required under Section 8 before any construction begins. Section 4 confines this regulatory scheme to unincorporated Pitt County outside any municipality's corporate or extraterritorial jurisdiction.