Loneliest Highway Shoe Tree (RETIRED)
Posted by: 
NevaP
N 39° 17.657 W 117° 59.196
11S E 414922 N 4349898
This large shoe tree was a spectacular sight along Rt. 50 in Nevada. Unfortunately, it was chopped down by vandals in 2010.
Waymark Code: WM1K67
Location: Nevada, United States
Date Posted: 05/24/2007
Views: 266
U.S. Route 50 across Nevada is called the Loneliest Highway because it passes through only a few, far apart, small towns. But the scenery is wonderful and interesting places are frequent.
This remarkable shoe tree, located a few miles east of the crossroad called Middlegate, is one of the oddest sights. The tree is a large cottonwood, the only sizable tree for miles around, and there are shoes all the way to the top. A few shoes have even begun to stray into a nearby smaller tree.
Local legend says that a young couple had an argument on their wedding night and the bride, in a rage threw one of her shoes into the tree:
"Reporting from Middlegate, Nev. — Fredda Stevenson sized up the despondent young man who'd slunk into her remote watering hole on U.S. Highway 50. He was thirsting for beer and, as Stevenson learned, advice.
His new bride, he grumbled, had blown all their cash on slot machines in Reno. Then they'd sped east through 100 miles of sagebrush and hills as dark and lumpy as mud pies. They camped down the road from Stevenson's bar, near a large cottonwood tree that had inexplicably thrived in Nevada's badlands. The couple started quarreling.
She threatened to walk home. He snatched her shoes, hurled them into the cottonwood's branches and said: Go ahead. Try. He stormed off with the car and ended up two miles away, at Old Middlegate Station. He polished off two beers before listening to Stevenson's sage counsel:
'You want to be married for the rest of your life? You better learn to say 'I'm sorry' now.'
As Stevenson told it, the groom shuffled back and apologized. Then, at his bride's insistence, he hurled his own shoes into the tree."
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There's plenty of space to stop, park, stretch and admire this phenomenon. And there's a geocache across the road.