Landowner Spells Out Message in 3 Miles of Trees Near Smithville, Texas

Perhaps you've seen this message flying between Houston and Austin, a man in Smithville, TX has certainly found a unique way to leave his mark on his property. Have you seen this before?

If you've seen it, perhaps you thought someone misspelled "lucky." Remember that Snickers commercial from the '90s? Great googily-moogily.

So back to the "LUECKE" trees, the massive signature came to my attention after Parker McCollum tweeted a pic of it last week.

According to Atlasobscura.com, "This humongous geoglyph, spelling out the last name of local landowner Jimmie Luecke, is the world’s largest signature. (Proving once again that everything is, in fact, bigger in Texas.) Created originally out of simple egocentrism, the giant “Luecke” of eastern Texas wound up proving quite useful, albeit unintentionally."

An unintentional side effect of the John Hancock of trees is NASA actually has found an important use for it. "The giant signature has been used by the U.S. government to analyze its satellite imagery. According to a statement released by NASA, “by clearing forest so that a pattern would be visible to landing aircraft, a landowner outside Austin, Texas created a target that is also useful for evaluating spatial resolution of astronaut photographs.”

Next time you're flying through Central Texas, between Houston and Austin, be sure to keep an eye out for the giant name "LUECKE," spelled out with over three miles of trees, and if you're wondering how many trees it took, it's a lot of trees, each letter stretches thousands of feet in each direction.