There are a few contenders for the World’s Largest Cowboy Boots. The best claim perhaps belongs to this pair, which stands 12m tall, outside the North Star Mall in San Antonio, Texas. Tall as they are, they’re barely visible from above, but thankfully the Street View car drove right by.

And they make quite the sight when decorated for Christmas!

A solitary boot of almost the same height can be found in Edmonton, Alberta. Also hard to pick out on the satellite image, Live Maps’ birds eye view is somewhat better.

It’s about 30cm shorter than the pair in San Antonio, but is equally impressive when lit up!

Meanwhile, a 6.5m pair of boots – along with a 13m wide steel cowboy hat – can be found in Oxbow Park in Seattle, Washington … and on Street View and Live Maps.

These structures were relocated from their original gas station location, where the boots contained the bathrooms!

Another location with a larger-than-life cowboy hat is the mini-replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, barely visible from the nearest Street View image:

The hat was added in 1998 in an effort to one-up the residents of Paris, Tennessee after several back-and-forth attempts to create the largest replica.

And in Yukon, Oklahoma, a beautifully landscaped boot can be found in Chisholm Trail Park – named for the route of a 19th century cattle drive between Texas and Kansas. The decorative landscaping, including fountains in the two small ponds, is even more visible on Live Maps’ birds eye view.

Thanks to ‘Koty’, Ray, . and Felippo.

Yes, we’re finally back, and as to be expected, we missed some great Google Earth-related news while we were off.

Firstly the story that seems to have sprung up everywhere is (of course) a Street View one. The garage419 site posted images from a high mountain road in Colorado, where the Google car supposedly took some spy-shots of a fleet of top-secret, as-yet-unreleased Porches!

This is actually the Mount Evans Scenic Byway, which is the highest paved vehicle road in North America, and apparently the only place in the world where car manufacturers can test their vehicles at altitudes of up to 4,306 metres (14,127 feet). Looks like those clever German engineers don’t leave anything to chance, eh?

Next, the Daily Fail tells the story of a “Lost World” discovered with the help of Google Earth. Our satellite sightseeing friends at Kew Gardens spotted an unexpected patch of green forest in the mountains of Mozambique, and when they paid the area a visit, were rewarded with the discovery of a new species of adder, three new species of butterfly, a rarely seen orchid, giant snakes, and colonies of rare birds.

Of course the country’s crappest newspaper failed to include a link to said unspoiled paradise, so it was up to the always reliable Stefan at Ogle Earth to come up with the goods.

Stefan points out that the most interesting thing about the area from up here is that even when viewing it with the enormously comprehensive Geonames.org database loaded, there are still no place names to be seen. Which suggests to us that anyone could find their own undiscovered paradise, simply by looking for places that aren’t marked in Geonames or any of Google Earth’s own databases! Fame and fortune awaits, clearly.

Finally, we come to the story of an American “treasure hunter”, who has gone to court to try to win the right to excavate a sunken ship, which he says he discovered using Google Earth. Mr Nathan Smith reckons the ship ran aground and sank in the mud near the Mission River, Texas, in 1822 while trying to avoid a hurricane. Mr Smith claims that half the crew died during the voyage and those remaining were killed by a local cannibal tribe. He also believes that the ship contains $3 billion in buried treasure¹.

Of course Mr Smith isn’t telling exactly where this sunken treasure is, only that it’s somewhere around here. However sources that have seen the Google Earth image in question describe it as looking “something like a shoe print“, so maybe we could beat him to it!

So, what else did we miss?

Here in Marfa, TX, we can see the patterns of 15 Untitled Works in Concrete, a massive concrete installation at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum conceived and founded by the artist responsible – Donald Judd.

Judd was a minimalist sculptor who purchased this 1.4 km² of desert in 1979 as a non-profit art foundation dedicated to Judd and his contemporaries, like the previously featured (1, 2, 3) GSS favourite Claes Oldenburg.

15 Untitled Works in Concrete actually consists of sixty five-metre-long concrete boxes, which are divided into fifteen differently arranged groups. The entire piece stretches nearly a kilometre across the desert, which might explain why it took Judd four years to complete!

The Chinati Foundation website has some good photos images of the work from the ground.

Thanks to Nathaniel, who has actually eaten lunch inside one of these pieces of art!

The Laredo International Bridge 1 is one of four road bridges that cross the Rio Grande to connect the cities of Laredo, USA and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

The 320 m long bridge is officially known as the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge (Wikipedia) and, as we can see from this satellite shot, the sheer volume of cars waiting to get into the states really help it to live up to its name – nearly a million cars cross this bridge each year, albeit slowly.

There’s a webcam on the American side that shows a typical American street scene, while the webcam on the Mexican side seems to always show a scene very similar to what we can see in the satellite shot.

In the webcams you might also spot one of the 4 million pedestrians who cross the bridge on foot each year.

Laredo International Bridge 2, or officially the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge (Wikipedia), was built in 1976 to alleviate traffic on the first bridge, and is only open to buses and non-commercial traffic.

Slightly shorter at 307 m it has six lanes, four or which head north into the US. All four northbound lanes appear to be continually gridlocked, which is hardly surprising when you hear that over 4 million non-commercial vehicles cross here every year.

Google’s Street View car never got close enough to see the bridge itself, but we can see the front of the border control building from a distance.

Next up is the Laredo International Bridge 3, or Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge (Wikipedia), which has eight lanes this time and of all the bridges so far carries the most commercial traffic – around 270,000 vehicles each year.

Our final road bridge is the Laredo International Bridge 4, or World Trade International Bridge (Wikipedia), which despite also having eight lanes, is only open to commercial vehicles – a LOT of them. In the past year this bridge has been crossed by nearly 1.2 million commercial vehicles.

It’s not only road bridges that connect the two countries here either – there’s also the Laredo International Railway Bridge, or Texas-Mexican Railway International Bridge (Wikipedia) which connects the Texas Mexican Railway in the US with Mexico’s Kansas City Railway.

Ironically, unlike the road bridges, the Google Street View car got close enough to the railway bridge for a photo opportunity.

As if that wasn’t enough bridges, plans are already underway for the construction of yet another road bridge and two more railway bridges.

For the full breakdown of statistical data about these bridges, see this traffic distribution chart at cityoflaredo.com.

Congratulations to Fraser, who finally got a suggestion published.

If you’ve been wondering why half of the Internet had gone quiet, then (like us) you might not have realised that today is the 4th of July, and that means it’s America’s Independence Day.

The holiday marks the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 – which is today held at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C..

Buy what does the National archive store in those white boxes on the roof?

All over America people are celebrating Independence Day with fireworks, parades, barbecues and public displays of patriotism: such as this guy dressed like Uncle Sam in Austin, Texas.

Not wanting to be left out of the party, the Street View Icon Guy has dressed up for the occasion too!

Read the full history of the holiday on Wikipedia.