East Texas Now Has Its Own Version of Amarillo’s Cadillac Ranch
Just a week after we posted "Tyler Needs One of These" asking East Texans to create a spray-painted car display similar to the one in Amarillo, we found one near Lindale!
On I-40 west of Amarillo, Cadillacs are buried nose-first in a dirt patch in the middle of a field, and they've been there since 1974. Roadside America points out that Cadillac Ranch was "invented and built by a group of art-hippies imported from San Francisco. They called themselves The Ant Farm, and their silent partner was Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh 3. He wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals, and the hippies came up with a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac tail fin. Ten Caddies were driven into one of Stanley Marsh 3's fields, then half-buried, nose-down, in the dirt."
And those Cadillac tail fins are on display in the Texas panhandle for all eternity. Travelers like me stop to take pictures and add a new layer of spray paint, only to have it get quickly covered up by the next person's graffiti art. It's become a thing. And now East Texas has its own version of this wonderful Southern quirkiness.
I made the post on July 30th urging Tyler to create something similar to Cadillac Ranch, and a week later we found this display on Highway 69 about a mile north of Lindale on the way to Mineola.
East Texans are awesome! The spray painting has already begun, and it's only a matter of time before the layers of paint pile on and produce a 6-inch layer of dried goo similar to the goo that sits on the Cadillacs in Amarillo. Travelers on the way to Amarillo will be rerouting their trips soon so they can grab some pictures of this gem. It's not Route 66, but it is Route 69 and that might be worth writing a song about too.
Now... we have questions! What kind of cars are those anyway? Who created the Lindale display? And what in the world should we call it?
Stay tuned. This is going to be fun.