It's easy to unearth such gems at any given yard sale. But what if that very kaleidoscope of cast-offs called the Jordan River home, rather than some trim and tidy lawn?

It happens - a lot. And sometimes the items are so bizarre they leave conservationists and parks crews alike scratching their heads.

Take the pig carcass, pitched after a luau. Or the modified beach tricycle, complete with buoyant tires. The latter was found hung up on some tree branches.

"I'm always surprised," explained South Salt Lake recreation supervisor Troy Bennett, who had another eye-opener this weekend as he and 35 volunteers traipsed the river bank for trash. "There are weird little things too. You're thinking, 'Wow, how did that get in here?' "

This time around, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon joined the patrol. On the strange scale, he was not disappointed.

"We found a Christmas stocking in the river," Corroon marveled. "It must not have been a good person."

Add that yuletide treat to the steady stream of regular river fare: tires, shopping carts and plenty of cigarette butts.

"Fritos and Cheetos are the food of choice for people who wander the Jordan River," Corroon joked, without really laughing. "A lot of people don't take pride in the Jordan River. They treat it like a garbage dump."

No need to tell Jeff Salt, whose nonprofit Great Salt Lakekeeper organization has been cleaning the waterway - and others - every summer for eight years.

State officials, he laments, are doing little to nothing to curb what he says has become a "conveyor belt" of debris.

"We're cleaning up the same stretches of river and finding this enormous amount of garbage," said Salt, who was at it again over the weekend. "It's not being managed or observed or enforced. It's too easy for people to drive their vehicles here to dump."

As a result, cans, tires, mattresses, and what Salt called a "fantastic" number of Gatorade and beer bottles, share the same watery grave.

During the latest recovery effort, two sofas joined some large truck tires and shopping carts as unfortunate river art.

"It's become more of the icon of the Jordan River," Salt said about the beached shopping cart.

Salt and others solicit volunteers to cover the river by canoe. But this time, they tackled the refuse by foot.

The cleanup dovetailed with this year's International Coastal Cleanup, a movement pushed by the Ocean Conservancy to cleanse waterways around the world. The slogan: Take a day to leave a legacy.

Unfortunately, notes Bennett, the river already has one.

"It never ceases to amaze me what's in the Jordan River."

djensen@sltrib.com