The budget for what would eventually become the Cadillac Ranch was $250 for a backhoe and $300 for each of the ten used Cadillacs. There was a problem, though, as the first car the artists tracked down was a 1949 model that costed $700, well over what they planned.
The idea of the Cadillac Ranch came from Ant Farm, an experimental architecture group that included Chip Lord, Doug Michels and Hudson Marquez. They pitched a project to wealthy patrons across the country, and Amarillo landowner Stanley Marsh 3 said yes, per Texas Highways. “We went back to California and drew up this idea of making a monument to the rise and fall of the Cadillac tailfin,” Lord said.
And yes, if you weren’t familiar with Stanley Marsh 3, that’s his real name, opting to use the Arabic Numeral 3 instead of the Roman Numeral III when writing it.
The cars, with models ranging from 1949 to 1963, went into the ground nose first, according to Motorious. The tilt was meant to echo the Great Pyramid of Giza, per the Society of Architectural Historians. The job took less than a week in the summer of 1974, and nobody on the crew had done it before. “We hadn’t dug holes to put cars in before,” Marquez said, “we were just flying by the seat of our pants.”
The paint started almost right away. Visitors marked the cars with keys and spray paint, and the owner chose to welcome it, per Texas Highways. “Every mark is permanent, but it’s also temporary,” said Stan Marsh 4 (the adopted son of Stanley Marsh 3), who described how quickly each layer gets covered. Over the years the cars have been painted pink for a birthday and black in honor of Michels, who died in 2003, according to Motorious.
Then, the city of Amarillo grew. In 1997, the row was dug up and moved two miles west, along Interstate 40, Route 66 News reported, because of urban sprawl. Photographer Wyatt McSpadden told Texas Highways there was a simpler reason, too. “That property was getting more valuable,” he said.
The move turned out to be harder than the original job, says McSpadden, who was quoted by Route 66 News saying “It was harder digging them up and replanting them than it was putting them in the ground the first time.”
In 2024, the Amarillo Museum of Art marked the installation’s 50th anniversary with an exhibit built around McSpadden’s photographs, Texas Highways reported.
The cars are still planted in a pasture, still nose down, and still covered in visitors’ spray paint. It might be a good idea to visit it yourself, as Cadillac Ranch is one of the stops of roadside attractions still worth pulling over for.
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