April 2018:
I’ve wanted to visit Tom Merkel’s Cuyama Car Garden for 20 years. It’s one of those legendary secret places people whisper about, but no one actually says where it is. This excellent Car and Driver article from 2005 was the first time I heard about it in the mainstream press, proving the rumors true. The magazine was allowed to run the article only if they didn’t disclose the location.
Merkel died a couple years ago and stories and videos about the place began surfacing on the web last summer. I dropped all my other plans and made the five-hour drive to one of the most remote corners of California for the September ’17 full moon with nothing but a pin drop on a map and no idea what was gonna happen. I had to park on the highway, hop a gate and hike in on a dirt road the last two miles, past about forty “No Trespassing” signs and over a couple more gates. Once I got into the site, I spent a few hours hiking around in circles in the hot sun, just trying to absorb what I’d found.
Nothing on the internet could prepare you for the scale of the place. I barely scratched the surface in my two afternoons and nights of wandering around—overwhelmed by the more than 1,100 cars and objects, sprawled over eighty-acres. The spectrum of quirky and rare marques was unparalleled. Whatever your personal obsession, the CCG had it covered. Post-war European micro-cars? City busses? Gas pumps? Sports cars? Muscle cars? Luxury marques? Garbage trucks? They were all there.
Me? Hearses, I couldn’t believe all the cool hearses! Too much Addams Family and Harold and Maude when I was a kid? Maybe, but for whatever reason, I ended up with an inordinate number of hearse pictures, including that ’59 Caddy, that once belonged to Brandon Lee. There were so many things I missed shooting too: the simulation police chase from the Blues Brothers, with its fleet of period correct blue and whites, lined up five-wide behind an accurate-looking Bluesmobile. There was a surreal fleet of white ’58 Chevy sedans and wagons once belonging to a local airport. At least 10 of them, all in a cluster. I’m still kicking myself for not shooting the Isetta or Messerschmitt, or even just seeing that customized short-wheelbase 1950 Cadillac hearse with my own eyeballs, instead of in another visitor’s snapshots, months later.
The Car Garden was not made up of junkyard cars: they were used runners, complete cars he brought here and arranged just so. Add 25+ years of nature, and many of them had begun disappearing into the dense banks of sage and mesquite, while others were partially consumed in mud flows and washes, like they were encased in sediment at the bottom of the sea. It was all achingly, tragically poetic and beautiful. After a lifetime of lurking around in junkyards, I’d never seen anything like it.
Hiking back out the 2 miles, wondering if sneaking in tonight would get me shot, I couldn’t believe my luck when I happened to meet the caretaker at the gate. Using the time-honored “beg forgiveness rather than ask permission” technique (combined with my infectious giddy amazement), I sold him on allowing me to shoot for 2 nights. In our conversation it came up that the entire collection was to be sold off and most of the cars were already accounted for. With no time to get back to a town for a meal, or book a motel, I returned an hour later at dusk and hiked in again. Shooting nonstop until about 3AM, when all my batteries were flat and I could barely stand up anymore, I hiked back out to the car and drove to the top of a nearby peak, where I slept, in a ball in the back seat, for a few hours. By 10AM I’d found a cheap motel in Maricopa where I crashed for the day, recharging.
When I showed up a couple hours before dark on the 2nd night the gate was locked, so I hiked in one more time. I was feeling pretty rested and fresh after snoozing in the motel all afternoon. I made it out to the back half of the Garden, which was even cooler than the front half. The truly remarkable cars were tucked way back in there.
At about 11 on the second night a figure approached shining a flashlight.
I called out using the caretaker’s name: “Hey, is that you?”
“No, I live here and you’re trespassing.” Angry. Drunk.
“I’m just taking pictures.”
“Yeah sure. At night? Bullshit, let me see the inside of your pack.”
I did, no parts or tools in there. “Look, I’m even packing out my empty drink bottles.”
No matter what I said, he would have none of it. Does not compute. I showed him pics on the back of my camera and he called me a “stupid tweaker.” He honestly thought it was all just a ruse to perform a little midnight auto supply.
I think when I said “The actual caretaker gave me permission to be here, I don’t even know who you are to say I can’t be here” was when it went off the rails. When I said to him “Don’t step there, you’re making footprints” he basically threw me out on the spot.
“I don’t like your attitude, I’m gonna check your bag again by the gate on your way out. Finish this stupid picture and be at the gate in 10 minutes!” And then he staggered off. Dumbfounded I stood there and didn’t move for a few minutes. Now what? Naturally, I wandered deeper into the place and stayed until 3, when I hiked out reeeeeally quietly. I heard some far off yelling about an hour after I ditched him, so who knows what transpired between the caretaker and this other guy. Sketchiest confrontation I’ve had in a while.
Never giving up hope that I’d get to return, I sent many texts and photos, but the caretaker never replied and his voice-mail box was always full. I quickly realized that the Car Garden, once one of the best kept secrets of the car world, had become one of the worst kept. Collectors and brokers from all over the US were bidding on the cars and hauling them out by the truckload, through the fall and winter. My friend John at Big M Auto Salvage dug out a couple of late ’50s MOPAR cars in early January and said there were only about 200 left.
So it’s gone already. I coulda spend 50 nights in there, but I only had 2. My pics don’t even begin to capture the scale of it. The slow reveal of treasure after treasure, as the trail twisted ever deeper into the remote canyon. Six months on now, the whole weekend feels like a dream.
Article about Tom Merkel’s fight with the forest service from 2009.
