Reporter
Car Talk
This summer Stanley Marsh 3 moved his famous Cadillacs. They told him to.
ALL TEXANS DIG CADILLAC Ranch, but not as deeply as Stanley Marsh 3. In late summer the eccentric entrepreneur excavated the Panhandle pop art shrine, which he and a San Francisco design collective, the Ant Farm, buried in 1974 about a half mile outside Amarillo on Interstate 40. Variously helped and hindered by cranes, backhoes, and curious passersby, Marsh moved Cadillac Ranch two miles west. Observers might speculate that he did so to steer clear of the increasing sprawl, which threatened the rural serenity of the setting (and drove up the value of his land). But Marsh insists his auto motive came from the Caddies themselves. “The girls”—that is, the cars—“didn’t like the smell of the city,” he says. “They like the fragrance of cow manure and wheat and new-broken sod.” After the roadside attraction was meticulously recreated, all that remained at the first site were ten huge holes and a large sign typical of Marsh’s tongue-in-cheek humor: “Unmarked Graves for Sale or Rent.”
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