We got a tip here at the paper from one of the librarians who was wondering what was the story with the big shoe barely visible on Trout Road. The editor asked me to get a photo and we questioned our resident Dells history expert, Janice Luete, what her guess was about the big shoe.
“I think that used to be Mattei’s land — maybe Storybook Island?” .. The old woman who lived in a shoe most likely … that was the guess.
All communities have these local mysteries and questions we ponder as we drive from point A to point B. Another one is the wayside on Highway 13 before you get to County K. Anyone who drives past this spot has watched the evolution of the DNR or Park Service or whoever is in charge versus whoever it is that fills the garbage cans up with excess junk.
Many times the place would be overflowing with trash – not just ordinary garbage either; but appliances, carpets and old machines. The government would be there loading it into garbage trucks, the site would stay clean for less than a week and then filled up again.
The next tactic was to add additional garbage cans. That didn’t help. Then there was a period of time when a full sized dumpster was on the spot – also overflowing with trash. When even that didn’t prevent overloads of trash, they took all the garbage cans away and put up signs saying, “No garbage collection, take your trash with you.” Fat chance. People left trash where the garbage cans used to be.
The next tactic was to close the wayside entirely, enforced by adding large cement median – type blocks at the entrances. The last addition is a snow fence on the outside of the wayside. It’s hard to see back there now to know if anyone is still storming the obstacles to leave trash at the site.
Since we are in the news business and one of our functions is to get answers for community mysteries, I called Treasure Island Resort and a woman there said our guess on the big shoe was a little off.
“It’s left over from Emerald City,” she said. “That was there even before Krazy King Ludwig’s that’s now Big Chief – it was there when I was about ten years old.”
Following up on the wayside mystery, a call to Dells Forest Ranger Gary Bibow yielded some results. He said Adams County Highway Department is in charge of the wayside and the site is one of 18 being closed across the state. He said he thought the garbage problem was one of the factors in deciding to close that one. I was not able to reach Ron Chamberlain, Adams County Highway Commissioner, who would probably have given me an earful.
“They’ve tried everything,” said Bibow, “even having the sheriff’s department wait to see who was dumping and then citing them for littering. But they found if people didn’t dump it there they would just go down the road and throw it in a ditch somewhere.“It’s been a problem,” he added in the understatement of the year.
Bibow said he had even heard livestock had been left at the site. I said I wouldn’t doubt it.
When I lived in Santa Fe New Mexico we had a community shoe mystery. A stretch of road, within the city limits, every once in a while would be littered with shoes – all kinds of shoes; ladies, men’s, sneakers, kid’s shoes – usually in pairs. This went on for years.
The shoes would get cleaned up and then a few weeks later when I drove by there would be more shoes in the road. No one, that I know of, ever came forward. It was never learned why – why shoes, why there?
Any other mysteries out there for us to solve? Send them in.
April 27, 2002