Carhenge: A Bucket-List Destination for Those With Time, and Gas, to Burn

September 26, 2012, 1:52 pm

By LARRY EDSALL

ALLIANCE, Neb. - The first thing I have to report about Carhenge is that to see it, you really have to want to see it.

Unlike Cadillac Ranch, that rectilinear riot of colors and upended tailfins near Interstate 40, outside of Amarillo, Tex., Carhenge, a similar automotive sculpture inspired by the ancient grouping of stone slabs in Britain, is near no significant tourist or transit route. To get here, I drove through the Nebraska Sand Hills, where in one 40-mile stretch of winding two-lane road, I encountered but five pickup trucks, three of them pulling cattle trailers and each with a driver who lifted the fingers on his left hand to salute me as I passed.

Traffic can be sparse here, in the far we stern part of Nebraska that extends up and over the northeastern corner of Colorado, but the parking lot at Carhenge was never empty during my late-morning visit. Luckily, a car was just leaving its spot as I arrived. Next came a couple from Texas who had also seen the Stonehenge re-creation in their home state. Here on a bow-hunting trip, the couple took the detour when friends noted the Stonehenge-like circle of cars was on the route home.

A local man was showing off the attraction to an aunt and uncle visiting from out of town, something he said he did for all visiting relatives. As I left, a husband and wife from Germany arrived in a motorhome they rented in San Francisco and were driving to New York. The husband learned about the site during research for the trip, and plotted it into their cross-country route.

And me? I've been writing about cars for a quarter of a century, but if I have heard about this installation I had forgotten about it until a few week s ago, when it was mentioned in something I happened to be reading. Having seen the circle of stones in England some 20 years ago and visited Cadillac Ranch several times while driving from my home in Arizona to Michigan, I figured I should see Carhenge, even if it meant driving a few hundred miles out of my way.

Accounting for the $4-a-gallon gas burned in the name of a frivolous detour, the trip was worth it, and not just for the primary attraction. There was the story of Jim Reinders, an artist who undertook the project as a tribute to his deceased father. And apart from the ring of vehicles, there are a number of whimsical ancillary players on the site to take in.

According to the Web site of Friends of Carhenge, one of the few sources of information about the sculpture, Mr. Reinders set about the project in 1987, having been awed by Stonehenge when living in England. A 1962 Cadillac was given the honor of being the “heel” stone in the arrangement.

A couple of the 38 automobiles partially buried or welded on top of those were from non-American brands. These, however, were swapped out at an unidentified date and replaced with Detroit products. One of the imports remains partially interred at the edge of the 10-acre site, bearing the epitaph that vehicles like it “served their purpose while Detroit slept.”

Carefully arrayed and painted a stone gray, the central sculpture is accompanied by other automotive works on the site, some of which are covered in graffiti. Though spray-painting the cars at Cadillac Ranch is a tradition, to my eye the license taken by visitors to Carhenge seemed to detract from the intentions of the artist.

The art here, all of it fashioned from auto parts and pieces, includes a giant fish, a dinosaur, a wind chime and adjacent pieces called “The Carnastoga” and “The Fourd Seasons,” consisting of embedded Fords that represented the four seasons in a Nebraska wheat field. The white car on the end, tilted at a 45-degree angle, represents the cold and windy winter.

I was particularly fascinated by a windmill piece made entirely of wheels. Wondering whether its blades actually turned, I gave a wheel a push. Let the curious with young children or dogs beware, as not only do they turn, they also spin an old radiator fan attached to the structure's base.

There was much to fascinate, but also frustrate, a visitor. I wanted to know the contents of the time-capsule Cadillac partially buried by the local high school classes of 1944 and 1945, with instructions to unearth it in June 2044. With much of the artwork on premises uncredited, I wondered who created that whirligig of wheels that I admired. Save for a sign indicating “The Spawning Salmon” was made by Geoff Sandhurst, a Canadian artist, a visitor is left to wonder.

That may be fitting. The ancients who built Stonehenge also failed to leave blueprints, liner notes or roadside his torical markers for posterity.