The Blue Charley Chronicles: Carhenge

The Blue Charley Chronicles has moved! Please visit the new site at The Blue Charley Chronicles – Roadside attractions, small towns, museums, and more from the USA

In England, they have Stonehenge. In Alliance, Nebraska, they have Carhenge. The settings could hardly be more different. And one was built an estimated 4,000-5,000 years ago. The other in 1987. One attracts some 800,000 visitor per year. The other 60,000. But each is a spectacle to behold, with a circle of monoliths (of one kind or another) standing in fields.

Local resident Jim Reinders lived in England for seven years, and studied Stonehenge. When he returned to Nebraska, he conceived a Stonehenge of his own – only built out of automobiles. And Reinders did not envision it becoming a tourist attraction; instead, it was to be a memorial to his father, who died a few years earlier.

Over the course of that summer 30 years ago, Reinders and a cohort of family members put up 39 classic American cars in the same proportions as Stonehenge. Whether buried partway in the ground, standing alone, or joined with others as part of an arch, the autos are all spray painted gray. They came from local farms and dumps.

“It took a lot of blood, sweat, and beers,” Reinders, who was 89 as of this past August, has said.

On the Summer Solstice in 1987, he and his family dedicated the work with champagne, poetry, songs, and a play written by the family.

Since then, a gift shop and additional metal works of art by local artists have sprouted up beside Carhenge. Four years ago, the site was gifted to the city.

“He was a chemical engineer,” Diane of the gift shop tells me. “He really became enamored with Stonehenge. The more he looked at it, the more he thought ‘You know, I could do that,’ so he came home and got with is siblings and they did it. He says, ‘When I did this I never had a clue what it would be.’”

What it has become is a roadside mecca that has attracted people far and wide to this modest Nebraska town of 8,500 people that is also known for its ties to railroad history (specifically, it’s connection to the coal lines taken from the Powder River Basin).

“Look at this book,” Diane says, pointing out the locations printed in the guest book in just the last three months. “This is bizarre.”

Carhenge has brought traveling enthusiasts in search of roadside lore (like me), but its visitors run the gamut to folks who just happen to drive me—and can’t ignore the towering Cadillacs and other vehicles standing high on the plains.

The recent solar eclipse brought lots of traffic into Alliance. The geography of the area, the lore and fascination with the American automobile, and the rarity of the celestial event made it a draw for star-seekers and car-lovers alike.

Reinders himself came up from his residence in Texas to see the eclipse at Carhenge, but he doesn’t buy into the mania.

“I’d like to say it was all part of the greater plan, but I’d be lying through my teeth,” Reinders said when asked by the Washington Post if he envisioned his work to be connected to an event like the eclipse.

He doesn’t know why Stonehenge was built, but figures “I like to think they’re like people today. They want the universe to know they were here.”

Carhenge was not an immediate success, as many in the community declared it “a vertical junkyard,” as Reinders puts it. But it came to be accepted, and then promoted.

“Some people actually come to Carhenge expecting a mystical, magical experience,” Kevin Howard, head of Alliance’s Visitors Bureau told NPR. “Carhenge is whatever you want it to be to you.”

With the site now in the hands of the city, Carhenge won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Could it last as long as Stonehenge? Probably not, but already achieved a legendary status in its own right.