As a tribute to America's best automobile, a collective of artists called Ant Farm decided
to place 10 Cadillacs, ranging from a 1949 Club Coupe to a 1963 Sedan, in a wheat field
located west of Amarillo, Texas. Mr. Stanley Marsh 3, a local helium tycoon, provided some
place for the cars to rest. Ten big holes were dug and the cars were driven with their
front end into them. Some people may think of this as sacrilege, as many of these cars are
now much sought after collector's items. However, in the seventies, when this piece of art
was constructed, a 1959 Cadillac was not as hot as it is today. Had the cars not be used
for the Ranch, they would most likely have ended up in an obscure junk yard. So, I think
they serve a better purpose today by reminding both Americans and foreigners of this great
American automotive heritage. I sincerely hope the Cadillac Ranch may continue to exist
for a long, long time to come.
In August 1997 Cadillac Ranch was moved 2 miles to west in order to escape from the
expanding Amarillo city limits. Read all about the move in this USA
Today article. An updated map is online as well. Be sure to
take your paint spray cans with you, as the purpose of this monument is to let the
audience participate in it. You can simply write down your name, or if you have an
inspiring message, leave it on one of the cars for the other visitors to read (or to
erase). While Ant Farm created Cadillac Ranch as a public sculpture, they protect their
legal copyright ownership of the image. You may take photographs there, but any commercial
exploitation in advertising or product promotion is expressly prohibited without written
permission from the artists. Click here to learn more about how
Cadillac Ranch has been used in advertising and how to obtain permission to do so.
The following text is contributed by Chip Lord, and is an exclusive first
hand description on how Cadillac Ranch came to be. One warning before you start reading.
This story is not for the faint of hearted. It contains graphic descriptions of violence
and cruelty towards Cadillacs. The points
of view stated
hereafter are not necessarely shared by me.
A Cadillac magazine ad from 1949 proclaimed "Regardless of the price class from
which you expect to select your next car, you are cordially invited to inspect the new
Cadillac in your Dealer's showroom." and at the bottom of the page:
"Cadillac: The Standard of the World" During the 1950's Cadillac really was
the "Standard of the World", in engineering, "ride", safety,
and dependability. It was also a status symbol, something to aspire to own, a symbol that
a person had arrived at a comfortable level of accomplishment in life. But as the decade
of the 1950's proceeded, something strange and wonderful happened to this
"Standard" - it sprouted tail fins, and they grew each year, until by 1959 they
stood forty two inches off the ground.
As kids growing up in America during this decade, we were
acutely aware of the class symbolism and styling trends that the Cadillac represented.
General Motors used Cadillac to introduce the tail fin because they believed the prestige
of Cadillac would make the radical styling idea, the tail fin, acceptable to all
consumers. This consciousness was something shared by the members of Ant Farm, so when
Stanley Marsh 3 invited us to make a proposal for a site specific art work in 1973, it was
logical that we focus on the Cadillac tail fin. The following excerpt is from the book, Automerica,
written in 1976 by Chip Lord:
Stanley is a fat-cat Texan with a big ranch in Amarillo, an office on the top floor of
the tallest building in the Texas Panhandle, and propensity for pranks and mysterious
acts. Stanley has a giant soft pool table, inspired by Claes Oldenburg, which he hides at
various secret locations on his ranch. When Stanley met us he said, "I like Ant Farm.
It is a wholesome group. If you would like to do something here on my 
ranch, well, just make me a proposal. If I like it, we will do it!".
So the latent tailfin image became a roadside attraction, a monument to the rise and fall of the tailfin. It would be, we decided, ten Cadillacs planted alongside Route 66 on Stanley's ranch. We drew up an artist's conception of how it would look, and a budget. Stanley liked the idea.
In May 1974 we went to Amarillo and began buying Cadillacs. It was a white-trash dream
come true, buying and driving old Cadillacs on the windswept plains of the
Texas Panhandle. In our search we visited every used-car
lot in Amarillo and most of the junkyards. We bought a '59 Coupe de Ville at a junkyard
for $100 because "it had no papers," as the guy said. "Don't make a shit to
us," we said, "if you'll deliver it." He did. We bough a creampuff '62
Sedan de Ville from Guy Mullins Motors. It was a pastel yellow four-door hardtop and it
ran so well that it was painful to bury. We found a silver '49 fastback but the guy
was asking $700 for a it, a price we considered exhorbirant (the cars averaged $200 a
piece). Stanley suggested we buy it and the smash up the front end with sledgehammers in
front of the proud previous owner. So we did in fact smash it, with the cameras rolling as
the bewildered owner winced in agony. Our search for Cadillacs took us into people's
backyards and private junkyards. At the end of two weeks we had the necessary ten cars and
a spare.
On Monday, May 28, we went out to the middle of Stanley's wheatfield about six miles west of Amarillo. The hired backhoe operator was a bit perplexed by the task at hand but he dug, whe we told him, a hole eight feet deep. Then we showed him to use the bucket of his tractor to lift up the car until it slid into the hole. The first car was buried. Stanley arrived with fried chicken, beer and instructions not to talk to the local press. Work went pretty fast, despite curious motorists who would stop and walk out to the job site with increasing regularity.
When the work was finished Stanley threw an opening party fot eh Cadillac Ranch and
invited two hundred of Amarillo's finest citizens. The catered bar served gin and tonics
and guacamole dip. The dust was thick. The artists wore rented western tuxedos and got
very drunk. A lady whose fa
ther had owned the local Cadillac dealership brought a bouquet of plastic
flowers and we placed them next to the buried cars. A bottle of champagne christened the
lead car, the '49, and the Cadillac Ranch was open for business.
Since then thousands of motorists have seen Cadillac Ranch from the Interstate, and
have stopped to get a closer look. It has appeared on numerous TV shows, and magazines and
newspaper accounts and eventually used in advertisements for Chrysler, Lincoln, GE
Plastics, and for products ranging from clothing and chewing gum to computers. Cadillac
Ranch has been recreated twice - once for a Chrysler of Canada TV commercial that was shot
in California, and a second time for a feature film titled Cadillac Ranch. They re-built
the sculpture outside of Austin Texas. The film will be released later this year. In 1984
we celebrated the tenth anniversary with a party and in 1994 we did it again for the 20th.
A videotape of that event is available from Video Data bank in Chicago.
© Chip Lord 1976, 1996
Links to Cadillac Ranch resources
Last edited on January 16th 1999 by Rik Gruwez
These pages are copyright © 1995-1996-1997-1998 Rik Gruwez.
Pictures may be redistributed free of charge, except where otherwise noted, as long as the
copyright notice Copyright Rik Gruwez is mentioned and provided the pictures are not
altered or edited in any way.
Cadillac, the Cadillac Emblem, Seville, STS, Coupe de Ville and De Ville
are registered trade marks of General Motors Corporation .
Cadillac Ranch is copyright © 1974 ANT FARM (Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, Doug Michels).
