Random Acts of Art in the Desert!
CarHenge!
On New Year's Eve we took a drive on Highway 95 seeking for roadside oddities. Our goal was the little town of Goldfield Nevada, home to the "International Car Forest of the Lost Church"...or as we called it, "CarHenge." On a snowy and wind-swept hillside we found a collection of abandoned vehicles...cars, busses, and vans buried in the ground like they were thrown down by a giant child in the midst of a giant temper tantrum. There was no sign on the highway directing us...we later found the sign propped up on a junked car at the entrance to the site.
I've never been to the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas on Route 66, but I know that the designs on the painted Cadillacs are constantly changing...would-be taggers are encouraged to bring along their spray paint and their artistic ability...or lack thereof. I was amazed by some of the artwork on the vehicles at the Car Forest. I would like to share a few of the photos I took with my new camera...thanks, Santa!
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...
 
Modern Art?
Nite Owl Truck...
Owl eyes were everywhere....
Watching us...
Here...
   
What's holding up the bus?
The Art of the Spray Can...
 
Bizarre and oddly beautiful...
Is that Alice in handcuffs?
Strange faces with eyes that follow you...
These were just a few of the images that I liked the best. I hope if you ever travel that stretch of highway north from Las Vegas that you will stop and maybe get out your spray cans and indulge your inner artist. Maybe you will be the next Banksy.
 
Playing around with effects on PicMonkey.
This gate is on a parking lot in Beatty, Nevada.
It has it's own story that I will tell you some time!
Thanks for joining me on this Vintage Vacation!
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Zetta and her Apron
It's a New Year!
Showing posts with label Roadside Oddities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roadside Oddities. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Roadside Oddities...International Car Forest!
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Vintage Vacation...Santa Claus, Arizona!
Looking For Santa Claus...
Since Christmas was over, George and I figured the perfect time to look for Santa Claus would be on New Years Day when he wasn't so busy. Just a few miles south of the Chloride turnoff on US Highway 93 we located the sad ruins of Santa Claus, Arizona. A frigid wind was moving through the snow-dusted sagebrush as we pulled off the highway. We found the remaining buildings imprisoned behind a chain link fence with signs warning us not to trespass. It was obvious the warnings came too late, judging by the rude graffiti on the Christmas Tree Inn.
Colorful postcard from the Inn's heyday.
I found a fascinating website called Atlas Obscura. They have articles on abandoned Santa Claus lands, amusement parks and other cool places. According to the author of the article, a real estate investor called Nina Talbot arrived in Kingman Arizona with her husband in the early 1930s. She called herself the "biggest real estate expert in California." Not because she was good, mind you, but because she weighed over 300 pounds! She did have a flair for public relations, though.
This looks like a nice place to stop along that empty highway.
The author writes, "The Talbots founded Santa Claus, Arizona in 1937 as an attempt to attract buyers to the desert location. It featured several Christmas-themed buildings and visiting children could meet Santa Claus at any day of the year. The town's post office became very popular in December as children and parents could receive mail postmarked with the town's name."
Year-round Christmas menu at the Christmas Tree Inn.
No one ever bought land there, but the restaurant, the Santa Claus Inn...later called the Christmas Tree Inn...was quite successful. Food Critic Duncan Hines (yes, that Duncan Hines) described it as being one of the best in the region. And according to the article, in 1950, Sci-Fi writer Robert Heinlein wrote a short story about a gourmet meal served there by Mrs. Santa Claus.
Cinderella's Doll House
Santa's "Office?"
"The last gift shops and amusements went out of business in 1995, leaving little recognizable, except for a few vandalized buildings, a wishing well, and the "Old 1225", a derailed, pink children's train covered with graffiti." The train was no longer there when George and I visited.
Then and Now...A Study in Contrasts
The Inn and the Office/Gas Pumps
The Inn now.
Red and white stripes usually make me happy.
The gas pumps are long gone.
Interior of the Inn.
Happy children enjoy the nursery rhyme characters.
Inn interior in recent times...picture from a Google search
The Third Little Pig's House...all of brick.
The Big Bad Wolf must have driven them away!
No one bought any land...but they kept on trying.
The old "1225" in a Google photo.
I finally got it...12-25...Christmas Day.
The wishing well just over a week ago.
This has been part two of my first Vintage Vacation of 2015. I found a Pin on Pinterest that lead me to an article in Country Living Magazine. One never knows where the road will lead sometimes. I sure hope you like road trips because I have a few leads for some weirdly wonderful places in Armargosa Valley. If you are the foolishly brave and hardy type, Santa Claus, Arizona is still for sale...maybe it's just the place for you!
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Vintage Vacations...Chloride, Arizona!
Happy New Year!
Greetings from Arizona!
Happy New Year, friends! I love this time of year...new beginnings and new places to explore. I have had so much fun with my Vintage Vacations series of posts. Traveling the seemingly endless roads in the wide open spaces of the Wild West, one can come across the strangest and most remote of places. And I have come to believe that the hardy souls who settled these lonely places had to be strong of will...and filled with a longing for beauty where ever it might be found. Western settlers often had a sense of the whimsical and used whatever they could find to express it.
I am so excited to share with you the quirky little town of Chloride, Arizona where we went exploring on New Year's Day. Look at the top left corner of the vintage Arizona map. Follow Highway 93 about 50 or so miles from Boulder/Hoover Dam southeast toward Kingman.
First stop...Breakfast
The Southwest Diner in Boulder City, Nevada.
Boulder is a vintage lover's dream...I'll be blogging about it someday soon.
Welcome to Chloride
We passed by this exit sign many times over the past few years.
Chloride is considered the oldest continuously inhabited mining town in Arizona.
From our good pal Wikipedia we learn that prospectors first located mineral resources in the area in the 1840s...silver, gold, lead, zinc and turquoise. The town itself was founded about 1863, but mining was not widespread until a treaty with the Hualapai Indians could be signed in the 1870s. The mountains above Chloride are called the Cerbat Mountains.
Abandoned Railway Station
The Arizona and Utah Railway from Kingman was inaugurated on Aug. 16, 1899. It is a point of pride that Miss May Krider drove the last silver spike. The town once boasted a population of nearly 5,000 inhabitants, but by 1944 it was nearly a ghost town. The population today is somewhere between 200-300.
Here is a fun factoid...sometime between 1927 and 1929, author Louis L'Amour visited Chloride to check out a claim he had purchased. During his visit the town caught fire. Though Mr. L'Amour assisted with the bucket brigade, they failed to stop most of the town from burning to the ground.
It's probably just a coincidence.
This post office is the oldest continually operating post office in Arizona
Christmas Greetings
As you enter town you are greeted by a fence covered in rusty odds and ends and strings of glass bottle necks. The picture above does not do it justice. I was told by a resident that the owner of Shady Lady's Attic Antiques created the fence art.
Rusty Chloride Sign
Purple People Eater.
Glimpses of Ghost Town set and Shady Lady's yard art.
Junk creations are located all over town.
A few folks decorated for the holidays.
Old Gas Station
Roy Purcell's Journey
"The Journey" a 2000-square-foot set of murals.
When we stopped at a little general store that offered tourist information we were given a map of local points of interest. At the end of Tennessee Street was written "To Murals...1.3 miles unpaved road." We had no idea what was in store, but we shifted to 4-wheel drive and followed the bumpy snow-covered dirt road up into the hills above town. Every so often a painted arrow would direct us where to go. We were only the second set of tracks in the snow.
The murals were very much a surprise...so colorful and filled with symbolism. We later learned the murals were the work of artist Roy Purcell with the help of local residents. In 1966 Purcell had taken a break from working on his Masters degree in Fine Arts at Utah State University to work as a miner in the Cerbat Mountains near Chloride. The murals, called "The Journey" are done in the abstract Modernism tradition.
This panel is called the Premonition Scene
The Goddess Panel is to the far left.
The Mandala Panel.
Roy Purcell restoring the murals in 2006
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