Exterior view of a house, Leslie County, Kentucky, 1949

There is a high probability that this is an early sign made by Harrison Mayes, photographed by Eliot Elisofon for the feature “The Fruitful Mountaineers” in the TIME Magazine, Dec. 1949.

The photo doesn’t appear in the magazine, but in a blog post, that is not publicly available any more (archived version).

Time Magazine, Dec. 1949 – Google Archive