Walker County, GA Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Walker County Code § 22-192 governs off-premises signs, commonly known as billboards, anywhere in the unincorporated county. The rule sets a hard cap on billboard size: no sign face may rise more than 12 feet high or spread wider than 36 feet, regardless of the road it faces. Beyond the size cap, the ordinance carves out four scenic corridors where no off-premises sign may be erected at all. The first runs the full length of Georgia Highway 193 starting at the Tennessee state line, the gateway corridor into the county from Chattanooga.

The second covers all of Georgia Highway 136 from the Dade County line eastward. The third is the entire McLemore Cove Historic District, the farming valley tucked beneath Pigeon Mountain. The fourth reaches every ridge and mountain slope under county jurisdiction, expressly naming Lookout Mountain, Pigeon Mountain and Taylors Ridge, plus any other ridge whose slopes are clearly visible from a nearby state highway. A billboard proposed anywhere else in the county still needs a state sign permit, a site plan and an engineered drawing showing the sign's design before the county's Planning and Development Office will issue the required building permit.

Because Lookout Mountain's Georgia side, home to Rock City, sits squarely inside the ridge ban, no billboard can go up on that slope no matter how it is engineered. The rule applies only to unincorporated Walker County; LaFayette, Rossville, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain city and the Fort Oglethorpe portion inside the county each set their own sign rules.