Roadside Attraction

By Nick Gerlich Opening image by Mark Payler

ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

Philosophers have debated for decades the chicken-and-egg conundrum, and art is no different. While Oscar Wilde argued more than a century ago that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” it is the Aristotelian mimetic to which a trio of Northern California architects and artists subscribed in the early-1970s. Known as Ant Farm, they unwittingly conceived one of the most iconic (and ironic) art installations in the US, one that today sits only feet away from Route 66.

Art, some say, should imitate life.

And that it did, when they leveraged their knowledge of one of the greatest marketing ploys ever launched, the tail fin. From the late-40s through the early-60s, US automakers introduced new models with ever larger tail fins to set new cars apart from the previous years’.

What if representative specimens from that timeframe could be placed into the ground, a modern-day Stonehenge of sorts? What if these specimens could be accessible to the public? Chip Lord, the late Doug Michels, and Hudson Marquez were the driving force behind this vision.

It was an idea, though, that had to go searching for a benefactor. They didn’t have the means to pull it off, but they did find it in an eccentric Amarillo millionaire named Stanley Marsh 3. The result was the now-iconic Cadillac Ranch, one of the most popular and unusual attractions along the Route 66 corridor.

Art On the High Plains

Ant Farm found open arms (and pocketbook) in Marsh 3, who was both patron and benefactor of the arts. The grandson of a Texas Panhandle oil man, Marsh 3 (who preferred the Arabic numeral rather than what he called the pretentious “III”) used his education and inheritances to become an oil man himself, a banker, and then later a media mogul and landowner.

Marsh 3’s appreciation for art fit perfectly in the Route 66 city, which oddly enough had attracted high-profile artists for many years prior. In the 1950s, Amarillo welcomed renowned artists like Elaine de Kooning and Louise Nevelson. To his credit, Marsh 3 viewed life as art, and was inspired to use Amarillo as his creative palette.

That Ant Farm would find such a perfect fit is the stuff of wild dreams. The trio had become enamored with American car culture, and specifically the Cadillac, as what was then the showiest example of domestic automotive excess. The rise and fall of the tail fin as a marketing and design tool was not lost on them. Marsh 3 funded their project, which included Ant Farm members scouring Panhandle used car lots and junkyards looking for old Cadillacs that fit the 1949-1964 timeframe that the artists envisioned.

They likely never mentioned that they were creating an automobile graveyard.

Driven to Please

It all came together when Marsh 3 hosted them on his wheat field in June 1974. Located about a half mile west of the thenfarthest reaches of Amarillo, the Cadillac Ranch was intended to be a free public installation to which everyone was invited.

Don Arkon was hired by Ant Farm to dig half of the ten holes in that empty field. Arkon, a backhoe operator, recalled that while the project itself was a graveyard, not all of its four-wheeled residents were actually dead when they arrived in Amarillo. “Chip Lord and Doug Michels contacted me. I went out there, dug the first five holes, and pushed the cars in. The very first one was a ’49 Cadillac, and started going up from there,” said Arkon, who was 21 at the time, recently divorced, and without a care in the world. “It was just a job to me.” A previous commitment is all that kept him from digging the remaining five holes. Ant Farm had very exacting specifications for Arkon’s work. “I had to dig the holes with a 50-51-degree slope because they wanted each car leaning a certain way. Then we pushed them in there,” Arkon explained. “They set em up and they poured two feet

Stanley Marsh 3 relaxes on a recently buried Cadillac. Image courtesy of Chip Lord.

of concrete into the bottom to stabilize the cars. About half of the car went in the hole. If I remember right, the hole was about eight to nine feet deep.”

Interestingly, more than half of the cars were actually driven to their graves. “I know the ’49, they drove it,” Arkon continued. “Two of the other ones I did, they [also] drove out there. The rest they hauled out on a wrecker.” Ant Farm wisely drained all automotive fluids before burying the cars.

The inspiration for the project came from an old book that Ant Farm had stumbled onto. “We discovered a book called The Look of Cars that had this diagram in it showing the rise of the tailfin,” Lord recalled. “We began collaging it between the three of us.” While the trio focused on the art and architectural aspects of the project, they admit to a slight bit of social commentary at the same time.

Serendipity is a powerful thing, and it was responsible for bringing Ant Farm into contact with Marsh 3 in the first place. “We met Stanley through a network of artists, and began corresponding with him,” Lord continued. Marsh 3 invited them to Amarillo for a visit. He took highly to the then-young team and invited them to make a proposal.

That proposal, according to Marquez, the artist among the two architects, was for something far simpler in scope than what ultimately unfolded. “I wanted to make seed packets with pictures of the Cadillacs. I wanted Stanley to fund us to put fake seed packets out in the farm stores,” he joked. “The things would grow Cadillacs, one for each model year that had tail fins, so you could have your own Cadillac ranch.”

While it initially had Stanley’s support, the trio then realized that instead of having others plant seeds, maybe they should just plant the complete cars themselves. “We went back to California and drew up a proposal, which became the blueprint,” Lord said with a hint of pride.

Marsh 3 fell in love with the concept, but he was just the money man, and had little to do with operations. “He did come out there when we were doing it,” Arkon noted. “He had a red 4-wheel-drive truck with a tow bar on the front, and it said TRUCK on the side of it. I always thought that he was a recluse.”

If anything, Marsh 3 was rather disengaged from it all, and was content to stand back to observe, leaving the day-to-day affairs to Lord and his colleagues. “He (Marsh 3) literally never spoke to me. Never said hi, thank you, whatever. I had no workings with him,” Arkon added. “He’d just come out there, stand around, and watch.”

“Stanley would come out with fried chicken and a couple six-packs of beer,” Lord laughed. “It was spectator sport for him.”

As for the interactions between Ant Farm and Marsh 3, according to Arkon, it was a perfect match. “They all had long

hair and beards. They looked like hippies. Stanley Marsh [3] fit right in with them.”

Lord echoed this, adding that Marsh 3 was adamant about there not being any signage and that it should come as a complete surprise to passersby. While in Amarillo, Ant Farm had little contact with locals, aside from visiting junkyards and used car dealers. They lived in one of the Marsh’s guest cabins, and seldom had a free moment to mingle.

But Marsh 3, whom everyone in town knew, typically liked to keep his activities low-key, and never mentioned the Cadillac Ranch to local media. “A reporter for the [Amarillo] Globe-Times came snooping around. We made a press release saying no publicity until further notice. Stanley didn’t want local coverage,” said Lord.

Curiosity seekers would drop in as well. “We told them that Evel Knievel was going to come there to jump all these cars, and that Elvis Presley was coming for commercial filming. We told people a bunch of things,” Marquez laughed.

“On opening day, we had contact with the people of Amarillo. It was around June 10 [1974] and Stanley invited everyone from the dog catcher to the Mayor,” said Marquez. The people didn’t know what to make of it and were convinced that Stanley was making fun of someone but couldn’t figure out who.

“They weren’t sure if it was art. They didn’t know what it was,” Marquez concluded. And to this day, there are many who still don’t know.

Cars On the Route

While the Cadillac Ranch is one of the favorite stopovers for Mother Road travelers, the wheat field where Ant Farm and Stanley Marsh 3 originally arranged the cars was never actually on America’s Main Street. It was close – you could see Route 66 traffic from the I-40 location – but those are the details pondered primarily by purists. Tourists, on the other hand, have never let that interfere with a good time.

“He [Marsh 3] gave us alternatives to choose a location. It could have been on a very remote location, but it just seemed logical to be on Interstate 40 and close to 66,” Lord said.

That all changed in August 1997, though, when Marsh 3 quietly summoned a crew with backhoes, cranes, and trucks to dig up the Cadillacs and move them two miles west along I-40, to another parcel of land that he also owned. His reasoning was that Amarillo was growing too fast, and the city would soon engulf and surround his art installation. It didn’t take long for people to forget the move, though, because so few knew anyway. Besides, it was just another of Marsh 3’s wheat fields, on which he often ran cattle during winter and early spring. Visitors had to dodge cows and manure en route to the famous automobiles.

The cars were carefully placed in a mirror-perfect array, but this time, they were actually very close to Route 66. As it turns out, original 66 was located along what is now roughly the north Frontage Road of the freeway, putting the Cadillacs a Hail Mary pass away from the historic road.

While the current location is not exactly curbside 66, you can see it from there. City promoters have likewise never worried about this fact. “If the visitor is calling it Route 66 and is calling it an icon of Route 66, then that’s what it is,” said Kashion Smith, Executive Director at the Amarillo Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Cadillacs in the Classroom

Little did Ant Farm or Stanley Marsh 3 know then that their art project would one day wind up in the classroom. It may have been equal parts pop culture commentary and abstract art, but it also came to offer a teaching moment. Stir in the millions of people who have visited and contributed to it throughout the years, and it becomes a textbook example of how art can not only appeal to the masses, but also make them participants.

“When I teach contemporary art, I always use Cadillac Ranch as a starting point for my students, because it is a mix of so many key trends in recent art production,” said Amy Von Lintel, art historian and professor. Because it uses objects of popular culture — the Cadillacs — as its materials, it is a perfect fit for Pop Art. The thousands of layers of spray paint, in some places more than two inches thick, mean that the cars are not only material, but also canvas.

The result — which sometimes changes as rapidly as every 10-15 minutes during peak travel season — belongs to the public, Von Lintel argues. “It is performance art,” she explained, “… because every person who has ever gone out there and engaged with the piece, who has painted on it, climbed on it, taken photos of it, has been part of the work itself. It’s yours and mine and everyone’s.”

Ant Farm’s remaining members have mixed views on all that paint.

“That was not part of the idea. I don’t really like it,” said Lord. “But on the other hand, it’s like a skin that is constantly changing color, and it probably protects the metal under there. It means the sculpture has a life and is alive in a way.” But initially, he found it to be very disturbing.

On his end, Marquez strongly dislikes what has become of the project. “I hate everything about it. It [spray paint] never had anything to do with it. It’s vandalism, and we never intended for it.” About the only thing that hasn’t been done to the cars, he mused, was to blow them up, but that came tragically close to happening in 2019 when arsonists set the 1949 Cadillac on fire. That car has since been repaired by volunteers and is no worse for the wear these days. But it is

The Cadillac Ranch is quiet at the end of the day. Image by Efren Lopez/Route66Images.

a prime example of the dangerous, careless behavior that has been witnessed at numerous Route 66 stops over the last few years.

It took about a decade for graffiti artists to adopt the cars as their palette.

“If you look at photos from 1975, there is no spray paint graffiti,” Lord said. “People began by scratching their initials in the paint with their keys. All the taillights were still intact, even the rear glass.” That’s a far cry from the state of the cars today, but even in 1984, at the 10th anniversary party, Lord recalls still being able to see the original paint colors, along with many scratched initials and only a little spray paint.

For better or for worse, the Cadillac Ranch accidentally became an ongoing participatory art project. Even Marquez accepts this fate. “Art should be accessible to everybody. Whether it’s an art piece or a roadside attraction, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Looking At 50

While Ant Farm and Marsh 3 implicitly invited the public to view and participate, the idea that Cadillac Ranch would one day become a tourism magnet was probably not considered. Approximately 1.4 million people visit the Ranch every year, according to Smith. “We believe that is actually conservative, because a lot of the buses come in after 5:00 PM. It’s an incredible amount of people out there.”

Seldom is the site devoid of tourists, even after dark. While there is a turnstile through which visitors must pass, it is never locked. Rain or shine, daylight or dark, Cadillac Ranch goes on.

Cadillac Ranch will turn 50 in 2024, and there are whispers of a celebration of sorts. Marsh 3 died in 2014, and Michels passed away in 2003. The cars are not at all like they looked in 1974, with many parts stripped off. They are, for all intents and purposes, mere skeletons of classic cars, to the chagrin of some. “I really hated to see those cars get beat up and graffitied. It would have been nice to keep them the way they were,” said Arkon, who moved away in 1978 and hasn’t been back to the Cadillacs in 47 years. He has only seen them in pictures.

Marsh 3’s legacy lives on at the Ranch, as well as his other nearby art projects, which include the Floating Mesa, the intentionally broken-off legs of Ozymandias, and lingering mock road signs that he funded through the Dynamite Museum art group.

Amarillo continues to grow, and Marsh 3’s move in 1997 now seems prescient. The Cadillacs appear to be in a good place, a quirky roadside attraction that appears in print and online maps, and attracts visitors in spite of there still being no sign.

But that may change in the near future, according to Bryan Brumley, the General Manager of the Cadillac Ranch. Brumley, who was the Marsh’s house cleaner and gardener years ago, now mans a merchandise trailer onsite. Food trucks show up several days a week, and Brumley hinted strongly about plans.

“It’s rumored that we’re doing something really big in connection with the 66 centennial [in 2026] and the 50th for Cadillac Ranch [2024],” he said with a slight smile.

“We are discussing a much larger scale plan for a gift shop, parking, and a kind of restoration,” Lord added, but stopped short of saying what that restoration might entail.

As for selling merchandise, Brumley said simply that it was just time, especially with others peddling unlicensed product nearby and along the edge of the Frontage Road. T-shirts, caps, stickers, snacks, and spray paint are among the items available.

Lord is somewhat sanguine about the future of the Cadillac Ranch. With two of the four principal players now deceased, he knows now that the project that Ant Farm and Stanley Marsh 3 created was bigger than the sum of all of them. “It’s like the Beatles. But the cars are still there,” he quipped.

Meanwhile, like moths to a porch light, visitors come, anxious to be a participant in the ongoing evolution of one of America’s most popular stopovers. In the process, they learn that sometimes the best things on a road trip are free, and that art really does imitate life.