I wonder how much crack you can buy under them?

That must be one stanky tree!!

Did they mug people for all those shoes?

Where I'm from the gangs throw shoes over the powerlines to mark their territory.

I live in a small suburb of Youngstown, it's much quieter here than there, but it appears that the gangs have claimed the Taco Bell and the VFW.

We used to throw our sneakers up on the powerlines too, but we weren't gang members.

Interesting, DEP that Taco Bell and the VFW have become gang territory. Would be interesting to meet them! (not)

My 9 yr old's shoes are in the first tree mentioned (near Middlegate, NV). When my daughter was 2 1/2 we'd taken a road trip and during the trip she had outgrown her shoes. For some reason she was upset about the shoes being in the car, since she couldn't wear them any more, and kept begging us to let her throw them out, even though we were on a desolate road with no rest stops nearby.

My husband remembered passing the shoe tree at the beginning of the trip, so he told her if she waited patiently she could put her shoes on there, and it worked! We wrote her first name, and the date, on the soles of the shoes and let her help us fasten them to one of the lower branches.

A few years ago the Reno Gazette Journal ran an article about some environmental group trying to save the tree, so I'm not sure if it's still intact, or if the environmentalists were allowed to take all the shoes down, like they wanted.