Sometimes a sweepstakes can bring a jackpot for more than one winner.

Residents of the borough of Emmaus, motorists, pedestrians and others who visit, pass along or otherwise make their way to the 200 block of Main Street may agree.

Shirley Kline’s win in the HGTV “Celebrate Home Town Sweepstakes” earlier this year brought Emmaus a towering mural for Main Street.

In a prepared statement included in a media release, Kline, a resident of Emmaus, said “I love Emmaus and am so happy we’ll have a custom mural in town, designed just for us.”

Efforts to reach Kline by phone by press time were unsuccessful.

Kline’s randomly chosen entry brought sign painter/muralist River Prince to the Lehigh Valley for the first time where he hand-painted the mural on the outer wall of Altitude Marketing, formerly Wentz Hardware, facing Yergey Brewing tap room, formerly Merchant’s and other banks, in the heart of the borough.

“I’ve certainly loved being here,” Prince said, describing a call home to Mississippi to invite his wife to fly in to join him to see the borough. He drove “the whole way” in late October to do the mural and needed to start back by the weekend of Nov. 6 to start work on a project closer to his home.

The driving distance from Mississippi to Pennsylvania is about 1,034 miles, according to travelmath.com.

Visitors to the mural invited Prince to their homes and to meals, brought him apples, offered to buy him a beer and extended a helping hand when his lift briefly stranded him in the air while he worked on the mural.

“It’s the furthest north we’ve been,” Prince answered to a question about bringing his work to Emmaus.

Scrolling through his website, www.princesignco.com, reveals a range of projects – a hand-painted sign on a towering brick wall inviting diners to “EAT LOCAL,” metal letters lit from within by Thomas Edison-style light bulbs proclaiming “El Rayo Tex Mex” and a sign featuring a silhouetted pelican offering “Greetings from Moss” to describe but a few.

The skill of hand-painting and building signs has slipped from prominence in the age of computers where projects from design to finished signage can be done digitally.

The collaborative process responsible for the prize mural involved Prince, the Emmaus Arts Commission, the Emmaus Community Relations, Planning and Development committee and HGTV network, Emmaus Borough Councilwoman Teri Sorg-McManamon said in an interview at the site Nov. 3.

Elements such as references to the Emmaus Moravian Church bell tower, the trees of South Mountain, favorite area leisure activities such as hiking and cycling, the fresh produce at the Emmaus Farmers Market and the ubiquitous trains running through town reflect features important to the borough. The lettering used to present the word Emmaus on the mural is a nod to the Emmaus Movie Theatre marquee, Prince said.

Placing the public artwork outside offered its own challenges for the hand-painted mural. For example, the textured nature of the wall itself factored into the work. Also, a jutting architectural feature impacted the rendering of the second M in Emmaus.

Prince praised his collaborators.

“They understand the value in it,” he said of the hand-painted mural.

Prince used hydrophobic paint to ensure the mural withstands the weather of the changing seasons. Colors, such as the yellows and orange-reds, will fade a bit but that’s not unusual, he said.

The Celebrate Home Towns Sweepstakes promotion was sparked by the HGTV six-episode special event series ‘Home Town Takeover’ hosted by Ben and Erin Napier.

According to promotional materials from the network, the series features the Napiers and a team of renovation specialists revitalizing a town.

HGTV is also the television home of improvement series “Property Brothers,” “House Hunters” and “Flip or Flop.”

The “Celebrate Home Town Sweepstakes” also included a cash prize for the nominee of the winning town.

According to a media release, approximately 80,000 entries were submitted.

“Emmaus has hometown pride,” Emmaus Borough Manager Shane Pepe said in a media release made available to The Press. “That feeling mixed with our love of the arts has everyone excited that we’re the recipient of this special sweepstakes prize for Main Street,” Pepe continued.

Sorg-McManamon noted the project expands the efforts to add more public art to the borough and widen the reach of art into the world at large.

Other public art projects include the Emmaus Arts Commission’s ongoing program to paint fire hydrants in the borough and a recent mural in Emmaus Community Park.