he first time I saw the words “Chicken Farmer I Still Love You” in large white letters on a roadside rock in Newbury, N.H., I didn't think much of it. In my haste to get back to my Claremont apartment, I probably wrote off the graffiti as some nocturnal teenage mischief and promptly forgot about it.

Over the course of a year, I passed the sign on a near-weekly basis. It was one of the landmarks on Route 103 as I made my way back to Claremont from the Boston area. The third or fourth time I saw the sign, it finally sunk in that no one intended to paint over it. The words seemed silly, and yet they clearly had some significance to a handful of people -- maybe an entire town.

Chicken Farmer I Still Love You? What does that even mean? Many Newbury residents and motorists passing through town on their way to Lake Sunapee or Mount Sunapee Resort have undoubtedly come up with their own stories for the proclamation. I began to imagine that the sign was inspired by some lovers' quarrel, in which one party was a chicken farmer. The other partner, eager to patch things up, made a public and eternal declaration of affection. The real story probably couldn't be further from the one I concocted, but it was fun to imagine it.

Since the early 1970s, when the sign first appeared, there's been plenty of speculation about the history of the Chicken Farmer rock. Richard Wright, a member of the Newbury Selectboard, is a lifelong town resident who claims knowledge of the identity and story behind the sign. “I do, more than most, but I'm not at liberty to discuss it,” he said when I reached him this week. “It's a rural legend, and I think it’s better that people speculate on what the true story is.”

But several factors suggest that the “chicken farmer” memorialized on the rock was a teenage girl named Gretchen Rule. Her family lived across Route 103 from the rock at the time that someone, perhaps a shy boy who had developed a crush on her, painted the original message, “Chicken Farmer I Love You,” loud and clear for the girl of his dreams to see. As a teenager, Rule raised chickens on her family's land.

Gretchen Rule is now Gretchen Hamel, a chicken farmer turned Harvard Law School graduate, currently the administrator of the legal division at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services in Concord. She's fairly certain that she was the intended recipient of the rock's message, and she has some theories about who painted the words on the rock, though she declined to name names.

“I considered that my 15 minutes of fame,” Hamel said in a telephone interview, laughing. “I'm done. I don't have anything else I’m famous for.”

The idea that Rule was the inspiration for the sign has gained traction in various outlets. Yankee Magazine published the story in its February 1998 issue, and declared it “The Best Love Story of 1997.” The story was also included in a “love” edition of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. But it's the endearing message, and not the fame associated with it, that resonates with Hamel.

“With all of the horrible news that you're bombarded with on a daily basis, it's really nice to see something that is just a very plain, sweet sentiment, that isn't threatening to anybody,” she said. “It’s just there.”

Other stories have popped up over the years about the mysterious, loved “Chicken Farmer.” When Marc and Meredith Moran purchased Hopewell Farm three years ago, they were told that it was a former owner of the property, Mark Schultis, who inspired the “Chicken Farmer I Still Love You” message.

While Rule raised a few chickens in her family's yard, Schultis was a large-scale poultry producer in the early 1900s, and at one time had the largest poultry operation in New England. He also developed a bit of a playboy reputation, leading some in town to believe that it was a secret admirer behind the words on the rock. But Schultis left the property in 1932, decades before the statement of love was painted, and the Morans have more or less abandoned their possible claim to fame, though there's still a reference to Schultis and the Chicken Farmer rock on the Hopewell Farm website.

“Maybe they were pulling our leg,” Marc Moran said. “Usually, when you have a mystery and there's no definitive answer to it, people create stuff.”

Whatever the true story, the declaration remained undisturbed on the rock until the early 1990s, when the sign received an anonymous fresh coat of paint, and a modifier was added to the message. “Chicken Farmer I Still Love You,” it read. Tourists and town residents marveled at the love that remained strong, nearly 20 years after it was declared.

The sign would again be modified in April of 1997, but in a very unwelcome fashion. A newcomer to Newbury spotted the sign and called the New Hampshire Department of Transportation to make them aware of the roadside graffiti. The state showed up and painted over the message.

Staunch believers in local control, Newbury's residents did not appreciate the state's intrusion on their beloved sign. Days after the sign was painted away, the words “Chicken Farmer I Still Love You” reappeared in bright white letters.

Town residents enthusiastically signed a petition that was submitted to the state, requesting the sign remain undisturbed for eternity. It has ever since, save for an anonymous caretaker who traces each letter with a fresh coat of paint from time to time.

“We don't know who's doing it, but all of a sudden, you'll notice, hey, it’s been repainted,” Dennis Pavlicek, Newbury's town manager, said.

The story Pavlicek has heard of the Chicken Farmer rock involves two young people, madly in love, who had to part ways.

The town regularly receives emails from visitors, inquiring about the sign on the rock, and, according to Pavlicek, the message has inspired bumper stickers, songs, T-shirts and church sermons, and is the title of a book of poems by Lana Hechtman Ayers.

Gretchen Rule Hamel is aware of the many hypotheses surrounding the identity of both the chicken farmer and the person who loved her or him dearly.

“They're equally as plausible. I'm not going to argue with anybody about who it was meant for,” Hamel said. Then, she added, “I hope they're wrong,” and laughed.