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Virgil "Bus" Carrell in 2003. Photo by Bud Unruh.

Virgil “Bus” Carrell (1914-2014) was a United States Forest Service employee who was primarily responsible for creating and implementing the USFS’s iconic signs. Known as the “Family of Shapes,” the project was assisted by USFS designer Rudy Wendelin, also known as Smokey Bear’s “caretaker.”

Carrell was born August 8, 1814 in the Pacific Northwest. He enrolled in the University of Washington’s College of Forestry, and became a forester for the USFS in 1942. In 1946 he was promoted to district ranger on the Mt. Hood National Forest. He eventually became the district ranger for Mt. Hood’s Clackamas River area, and was in charge of planning and executing the largest timber harvest of any ranger district in the United States. Carrell was named Outstanding Forest Ranger of the Year in 1949, and was later moved his family to Durango, Colorado when he was named supervisor of the San Juan National Forest.

In January 1960, he was assigned to a position in the USFS national headquarters, and moved his family to Washington, D.C. When the Forest Service’s Division of Engineering was assigned a special project to “review and modernize the Forest Service’s sign program” in 1961, Carrell was named the leader of the project. Wendelin was the first to join his team, and Carrell would later describe him as his right-hand man.

The ”Family of Shapes” was implemented in the mid-1960s, and various forms of the signs are used to mark entrances and boundaries of national forests as well as national grasslands, hiking trails, ranger stations, and scenic overlooks. After their implementation, Carrell authored an essay titled, “Signs to Complement Natural Beauty.”

Carrell died in 2014 at age 100.