URBAN LEGENDARY LOCATION: The Angel Tree (Upper Valley, El Paso Texas)

"If you travel down some of the more secluded and tree-shadowed roads way out on the further reaches of El Paso, you just might find yourself passing by a mysterious roadside figure that's become known as the 'Angel Tree'...

El Paso's Upper Valley is the opposite of it's usual dry desert landscape in every way.

A green, fertile area of cotton fields, lush lawns and gardens nurtured by the Rio Grande, it's a quiet community laced with narrow roads that have names like Love Road, Memory Drive, and Bitter Sweet Place, many of which are cloaked in the shadows of leafy shade trees.

And alongside one of these shadowy roads stands a watchful, angelic figure carved from the trunk of a dead tree, peering at passerby with an inscrutable wooden face...

One of the first things you notice when you see her, is the disconcerting way that her gaze seems to kind of follow you, from wherever you look.

In the pictures, you can see how even her facial expression looks different from every angle.

I have no idea how long it's been there, or who created it.

Standing imposingly tall- maybe 10...12 feet or so- in a strip of grass on a roadside, it's all carved from a single tree trunk which is still rooted in the ground, and her flowing dress and folded wings have been painted or stained white.

As I said, we don't know anything about the origins of this mysterious Angel... and somehow, that only makes it all the more intriguing.

And it sure is quite a sight the first time you drive down the road at dusk, and see this white, robed being standing there... As if waiting by the roadside...

You can almost imagine her uprooting her trunk from the earth, and treading toward you with a creaking wooden groan...: By: Heather Shade