I agree. Sometimes these trees are called snaps. They are double broken and they grow up very much like you described. What you saw was a deliberate maker. It no doubt goes with other signs. It's tough to say whether it's Spanish, trail marker or prospecting. Fortunately the forestry service leaves them alone, as they are considered damaged trees and have no commercial value. It just means LOOK AT ME, then other data will follow.

I have seen a whole ridge of Spanish elbows. An elbow is a tree that has been broken, and the break will move up 90 degrees. Years later this tree will be huge and then be bent 90 degrees. It means go in the direction opposite the tree pointer.

In Northern California near a very important emigrant junction, there are tree twists (they look like may poles), snaps, Y bisections (the center limb is cut out) and other signs. I call this area the crazy trees area. But actually it was done this way to alert travelers of a major intersection in the trail when signs were not easy to get placed.

Also I have seen strange elbos in the forest occationally in many different forests. These common are stunted trees are bent 90 degrees by natural happenings. Over the years other limbs grow from the bent area and the tree now looks like a strange looking boar or ryno. This all happened because a large tree fell bending a small tree down. Over the years the fallen tree rotted away and finally released the staller bent tree to grow as it would unpinned. The results are this strange looking boar. Richard