CARS OR CARCASSES? At the Cadillac Ranch today, decades of accretions of spray paint seem to have melted the Caddies’ forms acrylic flowstone, rendering them hardly recognizable as automobiles.
STOP THE STICKERING! At the Route 66 drive-through photo op in Grants, New Mexico (where your authors snapped this image July 7), layers of adhesive stickers threaten to overwhelm the structure’s sleek surfaces.
HALF A CENTURY AND COUNTING Cadillac Ranch was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels. Read Joe Nick Patoski’s 2024 piece,“Fifty Years of Cadillac Ranch,”at the Texas Highways website, and listen to Anthony Arno’s interview with Chip Lord, the only living member of the Ant Farm trio that created Cadillac Ranch, in Episode 67 (March 2026) of his Route 66 Podcast on Spotify.
Markings along the Mother Road
Those of a certain generation know what we’re talking about—the ubiquitous doodle from World War II that helped build a sense of American moxie, resilience and camaraderie. It appeared everywhere from bathroom walls to liberated buildings, in the textbooks of high school pranksters, on vehicles and tanks.
It wasn’t, by a long shot, the first-ever example of graffiti. The word likely sprang from the…
