CADILLAC RANCH

Cadillac Ranch is located just to the west of Amarillo Texas and is visible from the interstate.  It consists of 10 classic Cadillacs that have been buried nose-down in a cow pasture.  Although this "work of art" is located on private land, it is publicly owned.  The work was created in 1974 and the Cadillacs all date from 1948 to 1974.  On a couple of occasions the cars have been painted either all white or all black.  However, generally, the cars have been the continued subject of graffiti, which the city of Amarillo tacitly encourages.

We were rolling into Amarillo after a hard day's drive from Flagstaff AZ when I spotted the cars, which are situated perhaps 250 yards off the road.  I took a quick shot before we headed on to our hotel.  Here is what the sculpture looked like from the highway.

 Observe the incredible flatness of the prairie and the absence of trees.

After we checked into the hotel, we returned for a closer look.

There were a number of people wandering around the entire time we were there, and it would have been futile to try to get a clear shot unless I had come back at sunrise (and we were way down the road by that time).  The site was also littered with hundreds of spent spray paint cans left by the graffiti "artists."

Here are a couple of closer in shots showing the graffiti.

Not super great.

And here are some even closer in shots.

These last shots illustrate how thick the paint was, indicating that the cars have been painted dozens--perhaps hundreds--of times over the years.

To my mind the work would have been more powerful if it had not been covered with graffiti, but apparently that would have been a losing cause, so the city went the other way and instead encouraged it.

According to Wikipedia, the cars were buried at the same angle as that of the sides of the Great Pyramid of Egypt.  Huh?