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You've heard of a shoe tree, the little device that helps a shoe keep its shape overnight. Tonight, the story of a real shoe tree and why it has a few people upset in southern Utah.
But this shoe tree is just a substitute landmark. The old landmark is now just a blackened stump. "It was cut down and burned up," explained Toquerville resident Annie Jensen.
The original shoe tree sat next to the highway just outside Toquerville. "Well, all I know is there was an old tree there. Come by one day and somebody'd threw a pair of shoes in it, and that's all it took," explained resident Leon Slaugh.
More and more shoes were added. "The idea kind of caught on and everybody started doing it," said resident Dave Hyatt.
People took photos. Perhaps they didn't take as many as you'd take at the Taj Mahal or the Grand Canyon, but in its day, the shoe tree was a bit of a tourist attraction.
A few months ago, though, somebody changed the dynamics by expanding the clothing line. "I noticed somebody had thrown a brassiere up on there," Hyatt said.
A day or two later, somebody mysteriously torched the tree. "I don't know that that's what instigated it, but it seems logical to me," Hyatt said.
Then the blackened tree was cut down by edict of the Toquerville City Council. "There was reports it was hazardous because people were stopping and taking pictures of it along the road," Slaugh explained.
So that's why Toquerville has a new shoe tree: They needed a replacement. In a quiet, out-of-the-way place, it helps to have a one tourist attraction you can really put your soul into. "This is a little town. It was kind of fun to have something different in it," Jensen said.
A Toquerville city councilman admitted to us he cut down the old tree after it burned, mainly because it was a traffic hazard. He says he's planning to cut down the new one too because he thinks the whole idea is stupid.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
