BOISE, Idaho — The sign disappeared from Bogus Basin Road as mysteriously as it had appeared.
The Idaho Press reports a popular troll sign posted on the way to a local ski resort was removed by the Ada County Highway District because the sign was not sanctioned, a highway official said Monday.
The yellow and black troll sign was attached sometime this fall to a signpost that already contained official signage warning about snow or black ice near a cattle guard on the way to Bogus Basin, according to reporting in the Idaho Press.
But a grinch didn’t steal the sign shortly before Christmas.
ACHD officials decided to remove the troll sign, which featured a picture of a hairy creature with short arms and legs and the words, “CAUTION TROLLS.”
“We removed it because it wasn’t a sanctioned traffic control device,” ACHD spokesperson Natalie Shaver wrote Monday in an email.
For years, local legend said if a car drives over a cattle guard, people in the car should open their doors to let “trolls” in for luck on the way up to Bogus Basin and again on the way down to let them out.
Other versions of the legend call for motorists to lift their feet as they pass over the cattle guard — where the trolls supposedly hide — or touch the ceilings of their cars or honk their horns.
Sometime before mid-November, someone had a troll sign made that mimicked the official black and yellow signs placed on the side of the road to warn drivers about potential condition changes.
After the highway district removed the sign, traffic engineer Tim Curns responded to an email from a concerned resident who said the troll sign was not harming anyone.
“ACHD policy prohibits installation of any unapproved sign or message on our sign posts, but we get unsolicited additions from time to time. Rather than trying to decide whose addition should be the exception, we ask our sign crew members to remove such items when they encounter them,” Curns told the concerned resident in the email, which was provided to the Idaho Press.
“I do believe the person who installed the sign on Bogus Basin wasn’t meaning to cause any harm, (and they get an “A” for creativity), but this urban legend will have to remain an unsigned one,” he added.
Mike Jones, a retiree who’s skied Bogus Basin since 1975, said he hopes ACHD will donate the sign to Bogus Basin.
“I’m sure they would like to mount it in one of their lodges,” Jones said about the troll sign. “People would get a kick out of it for years if it was mounted at the lodges instead of being thrown away.”
While the sign might be gone, Jones said the troll myth is still alive and kicking — and car doors will keep opening and closing on the way to and from the ski resort.
“Kids used to do it, and now their kids are doing it,” Jones said. “It’s generational now.”
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