We were in Amarillo, Tx just for an overnight travel stop. Barry had heard of “Cadillac Ranch” and wanted to go check it out since we were fairly close to it.
It is located just off of I-40 at exit 60, and is in a giant field. You park along the frontage road and walk through an open, colorfully spray-painted cattle gate. I did not take a picture of it.
I did notice that people are starting to put locks on the barbed wire fence. I wonder if someday it will be full of locks as the Lock bridge in Paris, France and London Bridge entrances at Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
I saw this on the way to the cars, and had to take a picture. 🙂
Cadillac Ranch evidently is a longtime road trip legend and one of the most iconic roadside attractions in Texas along old Route 66. Evidently people from all over the United States and the world visit to make their mark on the these 10 classic tail-fin Cadillacs. All ten are completely covered in unique paint jobs (graffiti style) and buried nose-first in the dirt. I guess you’d say it is an interactive display because many who come here, arrive loaded with cans of spray paint, and begin making their mark on a car of their choice – possibly changing its appearance completely.
It is one thing to paint one or more of the cars because it is allowed and expected, but to just dump your spray paint cans on the ground was more than I could take. Seriously people!??! There were trash cans provided between the cars and the frontage road parking! Although as I look at the picture now…maybe it adds to the “art”.
Who created Cadillac Ranch?
An art group from San Francisco known as the Ant Farm artists, made up of Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels created Cadillac Ranch in 1974.
There currently must be at least 4 1/2 decades of paint on these cars!
Cadillac Ranch has inspired a number of other vehicular roadside attractions. There’s the International Car Forest of the Last Church in Nevada, “Carhenge” of Alliance, Nebraska, and “Truckhenge” of Topeka, Kansas. “Carhenge” might be interesting, if we happen to be there, but the others don’t interest me.
(A piece of information I uncovered in my research on Cadillac Ranch is extremely disturbing! I didn’t want to include it, but I think it is important to not honor or glamorize the guy who provided the land for Cadillac Ranch “art”. In Nov 2012, eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 was charged with 11 felony accounts of child molestation! He then gave up ownership of the ranch – not that it made any money. He even had a previous history of sexual charges with minors, but with all his money, he always “settled” and was never convicted. He died in 2014. Hopefully, all his victims got plenty of his money before he died! What a scumbag!)