SUMMERSVILLE, W.Va. -- It's the kind of sign that invites a double take. Or leads drivers to point with one hand and poke their passengers with the other one.

	John Heller, Post-Gazette Charles McCue leaves his office in Summersville. Click photo for larger image.

It's the kind of sign that makes you want to slam on the brakes.

"Summersville, The World's Largest SPEED TRAP 4 MILES AHEAD."

And at the bottom of the sign, "Compliments of Charles S. McCue."

Summersville, population 3,250, sits on a busy four-lane stretch of Route 19 in the middle of West Virginia coal country, where cars fill Wal-Mart's parking lot and cows graze on hills above the county high school.

Police cars are usually sitting on Route 19, looking for speeders as the speed limit drops from 65 to 50 mph.

And they have no trouble finding them.

Five years ago, police in Summersville pulled over about 18,000 speeders: nearly 50 a day.

The tickets largely snared long-distance travelers who use Route 19 as a hypotenuse to cut about 45 miles off of a trip between legs of Interstate 79 and Interstate 77.

So many Canadians complained about Summersville that, since 2002, the Ontario office of the Canadian Automobile Association has recommended that travelers go a different way.

"They're adding about 75 kilometers by not going that way, but we're saving them a lot of hassle," said Tatjana Solker, media and public relations representative.

But what's good for Canadians headed to Florida has been bad for Summersville businesses that depend on revenue from the estimated 18,000 travelers who pass through town in each 24-hour period.

Enter Charles S. McCue, a Summersville real estate developer who owns the Wal-Mart and built the shopping center that houses it, in addition to housing developments and commercial properties.

Mr. McCue, 60, will tell you that he owns five Mercedes-Benzes, two of which he bought on eBay. He'll tell you that the carpet in his living room was purchased for $262,000.

He will show you a threatening greeting card he says was sent to him anonymously after he was diagnosed with cancer ("You can die knowing that we'll piss on your grave."), by way of telling you that he is not a man who will be pushed around.

"I don't have one scintilla of intimidation," he said, sitting in his office in a mortgage company he owns.

Mr. McCue said the aggressive speeding enforcement began in the mid-1990s. When the police started using the parking lot of his shopping center to catch speeders, Mr. McCue had had enough.

"I'll be damned if they're going to set up radar on my customers and take the money they were going to spend in my shopping center," he said.

He forbade the police from entering any of his property not within city limits (the city line runs through the Wal-Mart parking lot). And he started printing bumper stickers reading, "Summersville: The World's Largest Speed Trap" and, later, "Summersville: STILL the World's Largest Speed Trap."

After giving away about 6,000 stickers, he decided to raise the stakes.

	John Heller, Post-Gazette Skip Heater: Speed traps take a toll on rafting business. Click photo for larger image.

In the summer of 2004, he said, he spent about $350,000 putting up the billboard on land where he plans to build a truck stop. He also leveled a small hill across the road that could have obscured motorists' views of the sign.

He put up signs on both sides of the billboard, one for travelers entering Summersville and the other for those leaving: "You Have Just Passed Through Summersville -- Home of the World's Largest SPEED TRAP."

McCue said the issue was simple. "Thomas Jefferson once said that opposition to tyranny is obedience to God," he said. "If this is not tyranny, then I don't know what the hell is."

The town's mayor doesn't see it that way.

Stanley Adkins, formerly the city's accountant, was elected in 2000 on the day the city's former mayor, Steve LaRose, was indicted in a bad-check writing scheme.

It was under Mr. Adkins' tenure that the police wrote the 18,000 tickets in 2001. And he doesn't apologize for it.

"We had to slow people down here because people were getting killed," he said. "It was a carnage. It was just horrible out there."

Vacationers driving dozens of hours north or south to Florida or Myrtle Beach, S.C., tend to drive Route 19 as if it were an interstate, he said, not realizing that little old ladies are getting groceries or high school students are going to a football game.

And many local people support the mayor.

"If they can enforce it, go for it," says Robin Lycans, a manager at the town's Caledonia Cafe. "If it saves my life, or my granddaughter's life, it's worth it."

Mr. Adkins said the aggressive speeding enforcement was working; in the past few years, there hasn't been a fatality.

Because people are no longer getting killed, he said, the town doesn't have to give as many tickets (10,631 in 2004).

The change in the speed limit is clearly marked, he said. The police give out as many warnings as tickets, and do not stop drivers unless they are going at least 11 mph over the speed limit.

"If you can find even one person [with a ticket for driving less than 61 mph], call me," he said. "I'll give them their money back."

Despite Mr. Adkins' contentions, Summersville can't seem to shake the speed trap reputation.

A Google search for "Summersville" and "speed trap" brings up more than 400 hits.

Posters on the Internet grumble particularly about the option to avoid points on driving records by paying $20 for a Web-based traffic school on top of the $132 or $162 fine for the ticket.

Erik Skrum, communications director of the National Motorists Association, said he regularly hears complaints about Summersville, and that 10,000 tickets a year is still too many.

"We definitely consider what they're doing a speed trap," he said. "There's just a few in the country that really stick out like Summersville."

Skip Heater said the police patrols had taken a toll on his business, the New & Gauley River Adventures rafting company, and not just from the rafters who regularly call to say they are running late because of speeding tickets.

Mainly, he said, the Canadian presence has dropped dramatically in the past few years. "It used to be almost like I was in Canada," he said.

And as for Mr. McCue, he's planning to put a billboard on the north side of the town to warn travelers heading south.

"I've already set aside the money," he said. "I just haven't had the time."