Join Charles Kuralt of “On the Road” for this fascinating 1975 visit to Cadillac Ranch, the famed Route 66 landmark.
Two American touchstones meet in this 1975 video segment. Charles Kuralt (1934-1997) was the host of “On The Road,” a regular feature on The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. For 20 years beginning in 1967, Kuralt traveled the nation’s backroads in a motor home, reporting stories of people and places, both the offbeat and the ordinary. Along the way, “On the Road” became a piece of Americana in its own right. (Kuralt had a hidden life of his own, the world later learned, but that’s another story.)
In this clip, recorded on April 23, 1975, Kuralt visits Cadillac Ranch, the artwork that became a national landmark on old Route 66 near Amarillo, Texas. Created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michels of the Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, Cadillac Ranch, as we all know today, is an assemblage of 10 vintage Cadillacs buried nose down along the highway. Funder and owner of the installation was Stanley Marsh 3 (1938-2014), an eccentric Texas businessman, art patron, and prankster. Kuralt’s feature includes an engaging interview with Marsh—enjoy.
They looked better without the graffiti. It was already art, we didn’t need anyone’s attempt to make it so. I remember visiting the Oregon Trail wagon ruts in Guernsey, Wyoming. People making the long trek had carved their names in the nearby sandstone and the memento stood for more than a hundred years. Then the cliff began collecting more and more names just two and three years old, overwriting the old ones and crumbling the face of the monument. At their core, everybody is an a**hole.
Great car culture story. How do you find them? There’s something interesting every day at Mac’s Garage.
Isn’t Chas Kuralt the guy who had a whole second wife and family stashed away somewhere?