Carhenge, outside of Alliance, Neb., reminds us of our mortality. As we steer down the highway of life, sipping lattes and listening to satellite radio in our bright-colored Priuses and Suburbans, we try not to think about our inevitable demise.
But, like the cold granite markers of a graveyard, Carhenge speaks to us of our fate. Eventually – our colors faded, our songs stilled, cupholders empty – we will be consigned to the earth, reduced to mere shadows, the gray shades of memory.
Too heavy for you? Try this: Carhenge is a big stack of cars in western Nebraska, designed to look like Stonehenge. It’s pretty cool.
Let’s start with Stonehenge, near Salisbury, England. Stonehenge is one of the great mysteries of the world, a prehistorical ceremonial space surrounded by all kinds of other prehistorical relics, including stone circles, ditches, barrows and burial grounds. Begun in 3000 B.C., the original structure was a ring of wooden posts. A second phase was made of 5-ton bluestones dragged down from the mountains in South Wales, floated on rafts by sea and the River Avon and then hauled overland to a site on the Salisbury Plain.
Work stopped for a few hundred years. When it resumed in about 2300 B.C., the bluestones were moved and replaced by massive sandstones, some weighing 45 tons, that came from the Marlborough Downs, about 20 miles away. The sarsen stones were raised vertically and capped with horizontal lintel stones. It would be a major project even today.
On the morning of the summer solstice, the sun rises in perfect alignment with the monuments at Stonehenge. Why? Why were the stones brought hundreds of miles? Who did this and what did it mean? The only record they left are the stones themselves.
Compared with those questions, the mysteries of Carhenge are nothing.
Tribute to father
Jim Reinders spent some time in England, near the real Stonehenge. He got to know it pretty well. After his father died in 1982,
Reinders convinced other family members that building a replica of Stonehenge, made entirely of cars, would be a fitting tribute. Thirty-five of them got together for a family reunion in 1987 and made it happen, dedicating it on the summer solstice that year.
Carhenge preserves the proportions and orientation of the original Stonehenge in a 96-foot circle of 38 automobiles standing on end. It has bluestones, standing stones, trilithons, even the Aubrey Holes that marked where wooden posts once encircled the original Stonehenge site. The heel stone is a 1962 Cadillac. The old cars are stripped to their elements and coated in gray spray paint. The cars that represent the lintel stones are welded into place.
The midsummer sun lines up at Carhenge just as it does at Stonehenge. Sandy soil drifts into the window frames. Sunflowers and yarrow grow up around the edges. The wind whistles and rattles wind chimes made of car parts. Other “car art” includes a giant salmon, a dinosaur and a Conestoga wagon made from a Ford Country Squire station wagon just like the one I learned to drive in the late 1970s. There’s a cornfield just yonder.
Carhenge has an aura that is simultaneously whimsical and freaky. It doesn’t quite fit the rest of Alliance, a salt-of-the-
Earth railroad town of about 9,000 souls, but no matter. The locals have come to love it and work to preserve it. It’s attracted about 80,000 visitors over the years, including film crews for a Nissan commercial that’s scheduled to air this fall and an episode of Discovery Channel’s “Biker Build-Off” that appears in October. And a new visitors center should be open in September.
We visited Carhenge late in the afternoon, as the sun was sliding westward, then ate an excellent Mexican dinner at La Villa Restaurant. Just as we were about to head back to our motel for a swim, the neon blinked on at the Patty’s Zesto ice cream place across the street.
We not only got some darn fine ice cream and a couple of excellent, Edward Hopperesque photographs of the exterior, but a brand-new mystery to ponder.
What is Zesto? Why are there Zestos with similar (but not identical) logos sprinkled across the country from Atlanta, Ga., to Pierre, S.D.? Who were the Zesto people and why did they worship soft-serve ice cream? Who is Patty? And do they all serve rhubarb sundaes? Vanilla soft-serve with rhubarb sauce – found via a tiny handwritten sign taped to the window – convinced me that the Alliance stop on my own cosmic journey was meant to be.
Alliance is on one of the best routes between the Front Range and the Black Hills of South Dakota, U.S. 385 north out of Sidney, Neb. If you’re heading for Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, Custer State Park or the Wind Cave, veer off 385 onto Nebraska 2 just south of Alliance and go straight north on Nebraska 87. Look for Carhenge on your right.
Lisa Everitt is a freelance writer who lives in Arvada. Contact her at lisa@well.com.
The details
Find out more about Carhenge at the official Friends of Carhenge website, carhenge.com. If you have been there and liked it, think about buying a $10 membership or Carhenge merchandise, including shirts and postcards.
About the real Stonehenge:
english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.876 tells the story.
Good chow in Alliance: La Villa Mexican Restaurant, 614 W. Third St., 308-762-7424.
Patty’s Zesto is at 711 W. Third St., 308-762-9021, and Pryor’s Heritage House serves three hearty meals a day plus pie at 1015 E. Third St., 308-762-3425.
