Larger-Than-Life Town Name Fades from View
This photo from the 1970s reveals the beginnings of deterioration. Much of the ending letters are now illegible.
This photo from the 1970s reveals the beginnings of deterioration. Much of the ending letters are now illegible.
In 1933, 850 trees were planted on a steep hillside, in a pattern that spelled M-U-R-R-Y-S-V-I-L-L-E.
In the 1930s, Murrysville, Pa., used 850 pine trees to spell out the town's name on the side of a hill. Now the trees have grown too big and the hill has been scarred by development. In 1947, it earned fame in Ripley's Believe It or Not, which christened it the world's largest arboreal sign.
But as the trees have grown, the letters has become less and less legible. A dense undergrowth in the once-clear field hasn't helped. Now a group of citizens are trying to figure out how to save the sign in Murrysville, some 20 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Glenn Skena, the corresponding secretary of the Sportsmen's and Landowner's Alliance of Murrysville, says his group sees interesting a younger generation as crucial to the sign's survival. After all, it was a group of Boy Scouts who planted the original letters, in 1933.
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