How a clever sign maker pointed travelers to Boone

“Boone, the county seat of Watauga County, was our destination, and, ever since morning, the guideboards and the trend of the roads had notified us that everything in this region tends towards Boone as a center of interest. The simple ingenuity of some of the guide-boards impressed us. If, on coming to a fork, the traveler was to turn to the right, the sign read,

“To BOONE 10 M.

“If he was to go to the left, it read,

“M 01 ENOOB oT”

— From “On Horseback”  by Charles Dudley Warner (1885)

I’m not reproducing the second sign precisely — all the letters were mirror-image backward.