Cadillac Ranch: A Weirdo Roadside Attraction in the Lone Star State

If you think that the state of Texas is just a collection of Bush boosters, shitkickers, oil yahoos, religious whack-jobs and illegal immigrants, then think again. Texas has a long history of homegrown geniuses and eccentrics like Stanley Marsh 3 (he prefers "three" to "the third" just to be different). And very different he is.

Stanley Marsh 3

As the grandson of one of the aforementioned Texas Panhandle pioneer oil yahoos, Marsh never has to worry where the next meal or Cadillac will be coming from. While he has owned a couple of television stations and resides in an estate called "Toad Hall", Marsh is best known for sponsoring a public art installation called Cadillac Ranch, built on the outskirts of Amarillo, Texas right alongside Route 66 (or what remains of it).

Ant Farm

In 1974, Stanley Marsh 3 hired Ant Farm, a San Francisco-based architecture firm, to create a monument to "the Golden Age of Automobiles" (in Marsh's opinion, vintage years from 1949 to 1963) on an old wheat field that he owned along the Route 66 side of his sprawling ranchland.

Ant Farm's design concept was simple: half-bury several junkyard Cadillacs nose-first in Marsh's wheat field in full view of passing Route 66 traffic, creating what they called the ultimate "white trash dream." They scoured Texas auto dumps and found ten junker Cadillacs, all built within the Golden Age years 1949-1963. Ant Farm members then dug ten deep holes, all arranged in a line. They drove the Cadillacs into the ten holes nose-first and, thus, Cadillac Ranch was born.

Ant Farm members consisted of Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez, Curtis Schreier, and W. Douglas Hurr. The group had formed in 1968, dedicated to creating a new architecture aimed at the modern nomadic living of the time.

In 1978, Ant Farm group dissolved after a studio fire wiped out all their plans, drawings, and future projects.

Cadillac Ranch

From the day of its installation, Cadillac Ranch has created a media stir and an underground tourist attraction; and has inspired a feature film and even a Bruce Springsteen song.

Throughout the years, the car bodies have also served as a continuously changing graffiti bulletin board. In 1997, due to Amarillo's rapid growing suburban sprawl approaching near, Marsh moved the Cadillac Ranch two miles west of its longstanding roadside home.
In 2003, after Ant Farm co-founder Doug Michels, all the Cadillac Ranch Cadillacs were painted black.

SOURCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Ranch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Marsh_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_Farm_%28group%29
http://www.libertysoftware.be/cml/cadillacranch/crmain.htm
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/TXAMAcadillac.html
"Film professor's revolutionary past to be featured in Berkeley Art Museum retrospective and DVD", Scott Rappaport, UC Santa Cruz Currents Online, URL: (http://currents.ucsc.edu/03-04/01-19/ant_farm.html)
http://www.architecture.yale.edu/gallery/exhibitions/ant_farm.htm
http://www.wfs.org/futupjul03.htm