Vashon Island is a weird place. It’s a short ferry ride from Seattle, but it feels like a different century. People go there for the cider, the rugged coastline, and the quiet, but for decades, they went for one specific, rusting hunk of metal. It’s the bike in a tree.
You’ve probably seen the photos. A small, red children’s bicycle—missing its tires and most of its dignity—suspended several feet off the ground, swallowed whole by the trunk of a Douglas fir. It looks like a glitch in the matrix. It looks like nature just decided to reclaim a piece of 1950s Americana.
For years, the internet did what the internet does: it made stuff up. People claimed a boy went off to war in 1914 and left his bike leaning against a sapling, never to return. That’s a great story. It’s also physically impossible. A bike from 1914 doesn't look like that, and trees don't actually "lift" objects as they grow. If you nail a sign to a tree today, twenty years from now, that sign will be at the exact same height, just encased in wood.
The real story of the bike in a tree is a lot more human, a lot more mundane, and honestly, a bit more relatable.
The Don Puz Story: No Ghosts, Just a Grumpy Kid
In the mid-1950s, a kid named Don Puz lived on the island. His family had lost their home to a fire, and the community—being the kind of tight-knit place Vashon is—donated a bunch of stuff to help them get by. One of those items was a bike.
Don hated it.
It was a girl’s bike. It had hard rubber tires and skinny handlebars. It wasn't the kind of ride a young boy in the Pacific Northwest woods wanted. So, one day in 1954, Don and some friends were out playing in a swampy area near what is now Vashon Highway. He simply left the bike there. He walked away and never went back for it.
Decades passed. In 1995, Don visited the island and was taken to see a local landmark by his sister. He recognized it immediately. "That's my bike," he told reporters. He knew it by the frame. The forest had literally eaten his childhood hand-me-down.
How Does a Tree Eat a Bicycle?
Biology is aggressive. When a tree encounters an obstacle, it doesn't just stop. It uses a process called circumvention.
As the Douglas fir grew, its trunk expanded in diameter. Because the bike was leaning against it—or perhaps lodged in a fork of the young tree—the cambium (the growing layer of the wood) began to flow around the metal. Think of it like slow-motion pouring concrete. Over sixty years, the wood engulfed the frame, the handlebars, and the fork.
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It’s a common misconception that the tree "carried" the bike upward. Trees grow from the top, at the apical meristems. The trunk only gets wider. The reason the bike in a tree is five feet off the ground today is likely because it was originally tossed into a crotch of the tree or leaned against a stump that has since rotted away, leaving the bike suspended in the air by the living wood that grew around it.
The Vandalism and the Ghost of the Original
If you go to Vashon today to see the bike in a tree, you might be disappointed. Or at least, you need to manage your expectations.
Being a local celebrity is hard on a bicycle. Over the years, souvenir hunters have stripped almost every removable part. The wheels are gone. The chain is gone. People have literally hacked chunks of the frame off. At one point, the "head" of the bike—the handlebars and front fork—was stolen.
The community was devastated. This weird little landmark was part of the island's identity. Someone eventually bolted a replacement front end onto the tree, but it’s not the original 1954 metal. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a landmark now.
It’s still worth the trek, though. There is something deeply haunting about seeing man-made steel losing a fight to a plant. It reminds you that if we all disappeared tomorrow, the blackberries and the firs would have our houses digested within a century.
Finding the Bike (If You’re Brave Enough)
Don’t expect a gift shop.
The bike in a tree is located near the Vashon Island Pet Lodge, just off Vashon Highway. You have to walk a short, often muddy trail into the woods. There are no neon signs. You just have to look for the cluster of people standing around a tree looking confused.
- Wear boots. The ground is basically a wetland.
- Be quiet. It’s near private property and local businesses.
- Don't touch. The tree is already stressed from holding up several pounds of oxidized iron; it doesn't need you hanging on it for a selfie.
Other "Trees That Eat Things"
Vashon isn't the only place where this happens. In Scotland, there’s a famous "Bicycle Tree" near Brig o' Turk. That one is a sycamore that has swallowed not just a bike, but an anchor and a fire poker. It seems that back in the early 20th century, people just liked hanging their trash on trees.
In various battlefields across Europe, you can find "war trees" that have grown around unexploded artillery shells or discarded helmets. It’s a phenomenon called dendrochronological encasement. It makes for a striking visual, but for the tree, it’s a constant battle against infection and structural weakness. Metal doesn't flex, but wood does. Eventually, the metal usually wins by causing the tree to rot from the inside out or split during a heavy windstorm.
The Legend vs. The Reality
We love the "soldier went to war" story because it’s romantic. We want to believe that the bike in a tree is a monument to a lost soul. But the reality—a kid who was annoyed with a "uncool" bike and ditched it in the mud—is actually more profound.
It’s a testament to the unintended consequences of our trash. Don Puz didn't mean to create a tourist attraction. He just didn't want to ride a girl’s bike. Now, his childhood annoyance is a permanent part of the Washington landscape, or at least as permanent as a Douglas fir can be.
What to do next
If you're planning a trip to see the bike in a tree, pair it with a visit to the Vashon Heritage Museum. They have more context on the island’s history that puts these local oddities into perspective. Also, check the ferry schedules twice—missing the last boat off Vashon is a rite of passage you definitely want to avoid. Keep your eyes peeled for the smaller details in the woods; once you see one tree eating something, you'll start noticing the forest reclaiming all sorts of things.