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THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF A FIVE PART SERIES

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Mount Rushmore.  The Gateway Arch.  The Statue of Liberty.

America loves her some monuments.  Painstakingly created edifices that speak to the hopes and dreams of her people.  Symbols that represent the art of commerce, the greatness of materialism, the spiritual nature of what we hold dear.  Throw in some whimsy, add a dash of folly and you might really be on to something.

Enter Chip Lord.  Lord and fellow hippie and architect formed The Ant Farm in 1968 in San Francisco with the objective of designing underground art projects.  “We were doing concepts, sketches, and photo collages of imaginary landscapes and environments,” Lord says. “It was a way to realize some ideas that would expand on conventional architecture.”

The pair had a thing for automobiles and when a third partner, Hudson Marquez, joined the group their efforts took a turn towards projects that would focus on the place of the automobile in American culture.  The thing about building monuments and impacting culture is that those goals, while lofty, require money.  Generally other people’s money.

Being industrious and committed to constructing an automotive monument, the three sent out letters to all the eccentric millionaires all over the country looking for funding for what they had in mind.  One of the recipients was Stanley Marsh III, right here in Texas.  He responded to the invitation to fund a project with a letter noting, “I’d love to do something with you, but I only do things here in Amarillo.” 

The group had been inspired by a book called The Look of Cars, by Henry Lent, published in 1966.  In the book, Lent discusses the rise and fall of the tail fin as a key part of the design of American cars in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.  Their plan was to take the topic and immortalize it for public view.  It sounded like something Stanley Marsh III might just be on board with.

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Lord and Michaels made their way to Amarillo to meet with Marsh and discuss the project.  After two days of talks, Marsh told the two of them to present a proposal.  “We went back to California and drew up this idea of making a monument to the rise and fall of the Cadillac tail fin,” Lord recalled.  They put together a drawing of what the monument would look like.  It would be ten Cadillacs, each planted nose down in a row, one right after the other, at an angle to match those of the Great Pyramids of Egypt.  Along with the drawing, a budget was included in the proposal that included $250 for a backhoe and $300 each for the ten Cadillacs that would need to be purchased for the monument.  Of course, Marsh would provide the land as well as the money.

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The first Cadillac to be procured was the 1949 Sedanette.  They had to pay $700 to get it, way over their budget.  Most of the others were cheaper.  How they came to be Amarillo is a part of the story that is irrelevant for now.  Whether one chooses to believe or not that the ten Cadillacs partially buried to create the monument are really the ones featured in the first four parts of this series is a matter of choice.  

But what is not up for debate is that in one weeks time all ten were buried within eyeshot of Interstate 40 just west of Amarillo.

“We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Marquez says. “We hadn’t dug holes to put cars in before, and we didn’t know anyone who did, so we were just flying by the seat of our pants. We just dug some holes and drove the cars in at 60 degrees, same angle. We didn’t talk about that. It just happened to be. It looked good.”

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The morning after the monument was complete, Marquez got up before the sun and was there to see the sunrise take place over the ten planted Cadillacs.  He later said that rarely does art ever complete the expectation of the artist or match the vision that he started out with when the project began.  “But that morning was as close to 100% as I ever got,” he said.

A huge party on June 21, 1974 celebration of the beginning of Cadillac Ranch.  There were dignitaries and representatives from the local press.  And then, the whole thing pretty much died down.  Like good movies, fine restaurants, or first girlfriends, it takes a while for the greatness they represent to be fully appreciated.  A year later Charles Kuralt was passing by and was intrigued by what he saw on the south side of I-40 and pulled over.  “At first, we thought someone might be trying to raise little baby Cadillacs,” Kuralt said. “Then we thought maybe the farmer just parked them this way each year after he bought a new model.”

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This was back when America trusted journalists like Kuralt, a quarter century before they would discover that he, in fact, had two completely separate families that knew nothing of one another as he traveled the American Highway in search of folksy stories.  They just heard him finish his report with “a cowboy herding steers out there where the tall tail fins grow and the traffic heads west on Route 66 and the Texas sun goes down on the chromium bumpers of the American dream,” and figured he was on to something.  The crowds started coming, trusting Chuck knew what he was talking about.

Did the masses who made their way to Amarillo know the backstories of any of the Cadillacs they came to see?  Of course not.  If they had, the lines of cars parked along the highway might have been even longer. Readers of the CMC blog have insight that the rest of America certainly lacked back then, and a lot of them still lack today.  But with Every Car Being A Story, those provided for nine of the ten Cadillacs that make up Cadillac Ranch make the monument even more meaningful.

It was probably those who had no clue as to what each car had been through who started shooting them.  Down here in Texas, if we don’t understand something we generally either make it illegal or shoot it.  The Cadillacs, tail fins pointed to the heavens, became target practice for some of the locals who didn’t appreciate their significance.  Those who couldn’t afford ammo but still wanted to voice their opinions chose the route of spray paint.

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It became common for those making their way to the monument to come equipped with Rust-Oleum to leave their mark on the art.  And, as often happens, one thing turns into another organically without anyone having any control or say in the matter.  But the crowds got even bigger, as did the sale of spray paint at local hardware stores and home improvement centers.

By 1997 Amarillo had grown.  Land out west of town had become more valuable.  Crowds of frustrated artists armed with rattle cans had become bigger.  The monument had to be moved.  “It was harder digging them up and replanting them than it was putting them in the ground the first time. From the road, it didn’t change at all. It was still the same flatland background.”  

Other significant events in 1997 were taking place as well.  Charles Kuralt’s diet, drinking habits, and smoking led to heart failure on July 4th.  It was while in the process of settling his estate that his two families discovered one another.  Apparently not all his time On the Road was actually spent on the road.  But for those who didn’t share DNA with Chuck something even bigger was happening in 1997.  The internet.

The combination of moving the monument closer to the interstate and the internet providing a forum to tout its greatness increased Amarillo’s most famous attraction even more.  People from all over the world make the journey to Amarillo to spray paint their particular type of art onto one of the ten old Cadillacs half-buried there. Fifteen minutes later, it’s covered up by someone else’s version.  And so it goes.

The backstories of the ten Cadillacs were buried in West Texas clay along with their front ends.   But the story of the group of them collectively has reached around the world, drawing 1.4 million visitors a year to Cadillac Ranch.  Cadillac was finally able to regain its title of ‘Standard of the World’ for reasons beyond their grasp.

Stanley March III, who financed the project, had suffered a similar fate as Charles Kuralt, who helped elevate its fame.  Marsh III died in 2014 after being indicted by a Texas grand jury for the alleged sexual assault of two teenagers in 2010 and 2011.  Rounding out the list of details that would take the shine off his efforts to contribute to Texas culture were charges of four counts of sexual assault of a child, eight counts of sexual performance by a child, and two counts of indecency with a child.

The Ant Farm, the group of three hippie architects who loved cars, designed, and installed the monument, continues to appreciate what the Cadillac Ranch has evolved into.  Marquez claims to have only had two good ideas in his entire life.  “One was the Cadillac Ranch. The other was copyrighting Cadillac Ranch,” he says. “Ant Farm owns the copyright to Cadillac Ranch. For many years we’ve made money, it’s like an annuity. Commercials, clothing lines, billboards, print ads, everything.” He didn’t mention if Disney had to pay royalties when they used images of Cadillac Ranch in their animated classic, CARS.

No telling what those rights would be worth if they knew the story of each Cadillac they buried.

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