Alfalfa, OR

On a lonely stretch of Willard Road east of Alfalfa, Oregon, amid the high desert pines, you are startled by a roadside tree festooned with hundreds of pairs of shoes.

It is understood that when local high school kids leave town for college they hang up a pair of shoes symbolic of leaving home.

The original dead shoe tree appears to have burned and been cut down, but shoes are now hanging from a live tree nearby.