The Fabulous Cadillac Ranch of Amarillo, Texas

[Music] hello Wonder hussy here standing at the side of Interstate 40 in the great state of Texas about to check out a place I've been dying to visit for a long time what's so exciting about this particular part of Interstate 40 you might ask well I'll give you a couple clues first you can see all these K barriers behind me are covered in colorful graffiti you can see that everyone from Armondo to Enrique and Lorenzo have been here okay you want another clue over here on this side of the road well you can see there's a big dirt field littered with empty cans of spray paint and inexplicably it's a bunch of shoes stuck on the top of this fence okay well if you haven't figured it out yet that's right I'm at the world famous Cadillac Ranch oh you don't know what that is well basically it's a bunch of old Cadillacs planted in the ground round face first out in the high plains desert just west of Amarillo matter of fact you can see them in the distance there 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 of them that's right Armondo and Enrique and Lorenzo and everybody else who signed this K rail here all came out to the middle of this God forsaken plane just to look at these Cadillacs you you might be wondering well what's the big deal well I guess it started out as an art project one of them fancy artists collaboratives called The Ant Farm I think bunch of guys back in 1974 came up with the idea of planting these Cadillacs in the ground and so they did it's actually an interesting story though you you know you'd think it was like some artsy Texans I don't know where all the guys were from but they came up with the idea while they were living in California okay they were supposedly living in the mountains North of San Francisco and I couldn't find out online where exactly in the mountains North of San Francisco they were hanging out but I guess they got the wild idea one night while they were looking at a kids book about old cars and I remember this was back in 1974 so 74 cars were still cars I mean if these guys could have seen cars today but even in 1974 I guess they were boning the way cars had de evolved you know back in the ' 50s they had those boss fins on the back you know the tail fins that Cadillacs had so they started thinking about it and they decided to create this art project where they planted I think Cadillacs of different years manufacturing years in the ground somewhere and so apparently someone gave him a list of millionaire philanthropist I guess are millionaires that were known to you know be free with their money and would give some money to some wacky artists and so they found that guy uh Stanley Marsh iiii who owned some land outside Amarillo and he agreed to finance the project I guess he paid for them to track down all these different Cadillacs and he paid for the land for them to be planted in and well the rest is history I mean this is a super famous landmark it's been in a bunch of movies music videos commercials everybody who's traveling on I40 well except for the truckers are just trying to do their job I'm like everybody else and their Aunt Sally stops here to check them out and so who am I to think I'm any better than everyone else okay so I parked at the side of the road back there and apologies it's real windy out here today so hopefully the audio is okay but I'm just walking down the shoulder here oh looks like some enterprising Soul has a catac ranch themed food truck or souvenir wagon or maybe he sells spray pants paint cuz that's actually the cool thing about this Cadillac wrench is they not only allow but they encourage you to spray paint your name on them and so I guess over the years layer upon layer upon layer of paint has built up on these things and on all the fencing surrounding it oh W look at this there's like a little gate and then a short walk through this field out past the souvenir truck or the spray paint truck I guess it's sells spray paint and merchandise ah exit through the gift shop well good for him I mean I don't know if this guy Stanley Marsh's family still owns this land if that has anything to do with him but whoever it is good for them for following in the footsteps of all the Great American huers and money makers and well for just keeping the spirit of America alive me I'm cheap and I brought my own can all the way from Death Valley something like 800 m that way uh well I have a lot of extra spray paint laying around the house anyway and I figured why spend money on a new can when I can just use some leftovers from a previous project okay we're coming up on The Cadillacs this actually reminds me a lot of seven magic mountains outside Las Vegas if you've ever been to Vegas the desert just south of town has those crazy tall stacks of colorful rocks and there's always a bunch of cars parked there and tourists taking pictures and instagrammers instagramming and well it's very similar to this but this was here way before seven magic mountains and old Cadillacs are way cooler than a bunch of stacked rocks anyway okay yeah 10 Cadillacs buried face first in the ground I don't know much about cars but car guys that are watching you might be able to tell under all those layers of paint what year each one of these is oh man the air here smells very WR strongly of spray paint it's probably because there's just layer upon layer built up look at this oh my God it's just it's like lumpy oh my gosh I wish you guys could feel this it feels amazing okay I'm going to go on this side so the lights better and I'll give you a look at these different chassis I mean you can see this one does have or H used to have a tail fin at the top looks like somebody actually broke it off I wouldn't be surprised so I don't know that looks pretty old right and my understanding was that each one of these represented a different year of manufactur so let's walk down the line and see if that's true like this one here is a little bit more rounded I don't know this one looks pretty much the same I like this one has a real pointy tail fin on it look at this kid everybody's doing their creative part oh this one's got real pointy Tail Fins and this one ooh that looks that looks like the oldest one out of all to me and then here's the last one bringing up the rear also with a nice pointy set of tail pins that nobody has broken off so overall it's a pretty cool art piece I think the only downside is there's like clouds of spray paint wafting into the air and look at the ground it's just littered with lids of different colored cans of spray paint I mean this feels looks like it's freshly plowed like they're growing a crop of kryon kryon I heard it's going for $100 a bushel uh I'm guessing that someone maybe one of The Heirs of Stanley Marsh comes out here periodically and sort of picks up the trash because if this has been going on for 50 years you think there'd be way more bits and Bobs of plastic and old spray paint cans and I mean all things considered I guess it's not that bad actually speaking of Stanley Marsh The Eccentric millionaire who funded this thing well I guess uh he was accused or maybe even convicted of some kind of sexual abuse of minors I think in 2010 I don't know any of the details of it uh I read online but I wasn't able to find the details of the case some kind of improper sexual conduct with teenagers and so I guess some people want to disavow anything he had anything to do with but he just funded this project it was really the concept of these Ant Farm art collectivists so I still feel okay coming here and checking this out okay so now I guess the question is where am I going to spray paint my name and does it even matter I mean no matter where I paint it somebody's going to come along 5 minutes later and paint something over it and so in a way it's kind of Zen you know Buddhism is all about there is no self you know killing your ego well there's no better way to kill your ego than to write your name on a Cadillac in the middle of the West Texas desert and then have some idiot come along 5 minutes later and obliterate it actually I don't know if this is West Texas I think this is considered the panh handle but you know what I mean so yeah I guess I shouldn't spend too much time trying to pick a spot to put my name because it doesn't matter oh man look at this it's almost like drippings in it like what do you call that in a cave statites I can never remember which one comes down stalactites or stalagmites but just look at that it's like long drippings almost like te okay I mean if we want to continue with the farming metaphor of growing a crop of kryon what if what if this is how spray paint is produced it's milked out of these little teets built up over the years at Cadillac Ranch the good Folks at the kryon spray paint company come out here and they milk it into cans and then ship those cans worldwide to all the Home Depot and Michael's Craft Stores and hobby lobbies so that we can all buy it to use to spray paint our cars our front doors our Windows H it's just a theory and it's really interesting to see how many different types of folks come out here and there that cute little family down there dad and his big cowboy hat then there's some like artsy fartsy photographer with a tripod taking real photos oh look at that there's trash cans lined up down there so you would think all these spray paint cans and can Lids could have just ended up in the trash cans then again it's real windy out here maybe they blew out anyway this is right off I40 and I40 is one of the main roadways Crossing America so it stands the reason that there'd be people here from all over the USA but I'll bet you none of them are from Death Valley except me okay I'm kind of curious to go inside one of these cars what do you guys think should we go in I mean everything's been stripped out but you can actually climb inside I guess this would have been the front seat squeeze in here woo we man I'm going to get high just being in here breathing in all these fumes okay it's cramped quarters but I'm sitting in this Cadillac not really sure where I'm going I guess I should be sitting this way if I was facing front uh but if I was facing front I'd be in for a world of hurt because we're about to crash oh wow this is so interesting it almost seems like there's I wonder why there's expanding foam in here I guess they filled up the crack between the roof and the frame with expanding fo I'm not sure why they would have done that there must be some like restoration people that come out here and take care of this place I mean I did read that I think in 2019 there was a fire out here one of these Cadillacs partially burned up I feel like it might be that one right cuz you can see the bottom of it it's kind of looks like it might have been burned you tell me why somebody would want to come out here and set one of these things on fire but I bet it was pretty dang flammable with all those layers and layers of paint all the teets probably went straight up oh look at these adorable young Cowboys painting their names I love it super cute anyway I guess I'll just go write my name on the one at the end uh cuz why not doesn't make any difference at all well yeah actually it does in a way because the stuff gets built up into these super thick layers like I was showing you earlier and apparently there's a place in Amarillo right down the road where they make jewelry out of chips of it you know I guess they like gouge out chunks of it and then polish it and because there's so many different layers of paint and different colors it makes for this really cool swirled effect I think they call it catalyte maybe that's how I'll know when I finally find my true love he'll offer me a ring made of catalyte okay anyway let me get my paint out and write my name I guess when in Rome hopefully this paint works I've had it for quite some time I think it was from my vintage travel trailer when my friend Randy redid my vintage travel trailer I feel like he used this color for part of it inside and that was back in 2016 so like 8 years ago oh yeah it's working it's just so dang windy today that it's getting blown away okay here's a little white patch I'm just going to try to write my name real small there oh man it wasn't enough room okay it didn't show up that well but I actually like the fact that I at least use turquoise because that's going to look real pretty in somebody's catalite wedding ring okay it's pointless no one's going to be able to see my name in this jumble anyways so I'm just going to put my paint away and save it for something else no I don't want to waste spray paint that stuff is super toxic to make and then these empty cans just end up littering this field anyway just in a way feels kind of gross but I'm not trying to be negative about this uh installation I think this is really cool and it's really fun and I like the fact that it's interactive and it's bringing out the inner artist in everyone so I don't know when the tradition of painting these Cadillacs started like I said the installation was first put out here in 74 and actually this isn't the original location it was originally closer to town I guess Amarillo is still a number of miles that way so originally this was right outside town but then it grew to become such a tourist attraction and a public nuisance I guess causing traffic and whatnot and litter that they ended up moving it way out here to some more land that Stanley Marsh III also owned uh I want to say that was back in 1997 that they were moved out here so it's kind of interesting to think that for the last 50 years you know all through the 70s all through the 80s all through the '90s all through the 2000s and 2010s people have been coming out here spraying these dang cars I mean no wonder the paint's so thick you know 50 years worth of layers will do that and incidentally the paint jobs aren't all done by random members of the public I guess every now and then for like a special occasion they'll repaint these like I guess Stanley Marsh's wife for her birthday one year he painted them all pink for her isn't that a romantic gesture and then I guess another time they painted them all white for some commercial and then they painted them all black when one of the founding artists from the ant farm died and then again I think they painted them all black uh during the George Floyd black Liv matter protests but apparently it didn't take long at all for them to get nice and colorful again gosh I wonder who the first person was who came out here after the George Floyd thing and started painting him again seems like somebody would yell at you for doing that but then again I don't know folks do all kinds of crazy stuff here anyway another thing that I thought was kind of cool that I read is that the chain of hotels the Hampton Inn chain I guess they did a they had a campaign a while back where they were restoring iconic Route 66 roadside attractions which this is I guess right off the side of old Route 66 I mean I40 Route 66 they mostly parallel the same route anyway I guess the Hampton in hotels we're going around beautifying and restoring all these old historic 66 landmarks and they came out here and apparently they repainted each one of these Cadillacs to its original Factory state which I can't imagine how you would do that they I guess scraped all these layers of accumulated spray paint off and then started from scratch and then that guy who makes the catalite jewelry came out here and took all that paint they peeled off and used it to make necklaces and earrings and rings and oh my God that guy's probably rich in fact he should have a trailer parked out here selling souvenirs anyway that's pretty much all there is to the world famous iconic Cadillac Ranch it looks like that one the roof split off or just a big chunk of paint from the roof split off weird and what's really weird is there is a NeverEnding stream of people parking and making the trk across this field to come check these things out how about that who says there's no sense of wonder in America anymore I think these 10 Cadillacs beg to differ but then I suppose wonder is in the eye of the beholder you know you might look at this and go oh look how cool this is classic Americana Roadside Attraction everyone's having fun being artsy and then your friend might look at this field full of busted spray paint cans and go oh what an eyesore speaking of trash let's see what's inside these trash cans if anyone's actually using them or are they just throwing their cans in the desert oh I don't know man they're this one's full of I mean look how much spray paint goes to waste here not to sound like a total environmentalist n but golly I mean couldn't you use all this spray paint to build a well or something anyway I guess I'm just going to get back in my car and continue Rolling Along eastbound Eastbound and Down loaded up and trucking I'm going to watch the eclipse in Arkansas and I'm getting Mighty close to my destination but I just had to stop and check out this iconic Landmark because well spoiler alert I do see the Wonder in it [Music]

Channel: Wonderhussy Adventures

Views: 51,023

Keywords:

Id: mq8A198vj1I

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024