Very cool. How fun. I noticed it's all sheet metal and no chassis, frames, suspension, drivetrain, etc. Guessing the folks that scrapped them recycled the heavy iron or perhaps re-purposed the chassis into wagons, etc?
Known in the northeast as a "body dump". Engines for power plants. Chassis or wagon, hay carts, etc. Usually one guy would make these at home at night after his normal job . Would "fill" a ravine on his property with the scrap. Making doodle bugs, hay wagons, etc was a good way to earn some extra cash then.
Relocated a few 55 chevys, a couple of Packards and miscellaneous others to a spots like this in Iowa about 45 years ago. Recently talking to my brother about going back to see if any of them are still there.
Don't know if this qualifies but we had a small fleet on my parents property that "needed to go" after my Dad passed away. Unfortunately this is the last undeveloped piece in what has become overrun with homes. Gone now and too bad. Same thing happened when I was a kid to the farm I worked on. The town got after them and what happened there was an even bigger loss. Progress?
Good idea Ta Hell! I'll Google the area. One was a farmer's field, back over the hill. The other was a farmers ditch. He liked car bodies for erosion control. Hard to think about now. We'd strip what we needed and "ditch" the rest.
I sometimes hike past a Model A coupe sitting near an old gold mine in Wyoming. They stripped the body off, and used the frame and the engine to build some kind of mining equipment. The frame, engine and body are all there, though the body is full of bullet holes. I can't count how many times I've been tempted to haul those goodies home. Trouble is, the road that the Model A drove in on is now abandoned, and overgrown with fifty to seventy year old pine and spruce trees. Cutting down enough of them to get the thing out would be far more work than carrying all the parts out the half mile to the nearest road.
check this one out,what that's my yard sorry I mentioned these yard is in Clatskanie oregon all 40's to 60s Sent from my SM-G920V using H.A.M.B. mobile app
Sorry for the screwed wording, I was trying to install a hood spring think and type all at once, any way the aerial views are of a yard in Clatskanie Oregon it's impressive I've been threw it a few times its mostly late 40's-60's all makes they do let you browse through it . Sent from my SM-G920V using H.A.M.B. mobile app
Oldtinpusher pretty well hit it. Back in the day the scrap yards didn't want tin and the scrappers rolled the bodies off where ever they could get rid of them as they didn't bring any money for scrap at local scrap dealers. When the dump was up about four miles from my house up on the hill guys would haul hulks up there and the guys who ran the dump would burn them out and then salvage the copper and push them over the hill at the dump. My neighbor who is pretty well known for having a huge pile of vintage tin scrounged the sage brush in the 70's, 80'and 90's for every scrap of old tin that guys had hauled out and dumped off for 50 or more years.
Reminds me of an abandoned farm I found about 20 years ago that had a pile of discarded 20-30's bodies, and by piled I mean the stack was 120 plus ft. square and 20 plus ft. tall. Most all the bodies were sliced, the rears folded in, the sides folded in on one another, and cowls pushed forward, All the chassis, and drivetrain were gone, most likely from scrap drive. Went back a little over a year later and couldn't believe it was completely gone.
Over 40 years ago when they were building I-91 through Wethersfield, Connecticut they use hundreds of old cars for fill along the Connecticut River bank, and then they built the interstate highway on top of them. I was able to climb among the car bodies before they were buried, but not much was save-able. I don't think the tree huggers would permit some thing like that today.
we had a spot on the farm were we pushed the old equipment as we used it for parts or a source of metal ,had about 3-4 acres of stuff back there from trucks to a few old wrecked cars ( can't remember what they were most likely a gm products I knew of one old prewar ford ) and a few combines , ( one that burned up on us ) and some tractors , we put the stuff back there and picked off them for parts and such as the dealers wouldn't take them in for trade in . its all gone now the present owner cleaned it all out not knowing what he had.
Thanks for the cool photo. I remember as a kid every town had it's own town dump. I love going there with my grand dad. I would always bring something cool home with us. A old pedal car, toy truck, or maybe a bicycle. Then granddad would help me fix them up. I still have some of them. I'll try and take a couple pictures of a couple of them. Also my granddad had a farm, and he never got rid of anything. He used old cars, trucks and frames etc. to fill in his ditches to help stop the erosion too. Maybe I should go and try to dig them up. LOL Ron...
I am in awe of anyplace that still has piles of cars and parts any more! I can remember going 4-wheeling with my father in Oregon -AND- New Mexico in the 60's-70's...seeing 20's & 30's cars off the side of most dirt roads in out-of-the-way places...everywhere we'd turn off, seemed like old cars & parts were lying on the ground or in the bushes. I went back up some of these roads not too long ago in both states, and not a single item was to be seen...anywhere! Really surprised me!...It's like a giant vacuum cleaner sucked em' all up, big and small! Old chassis' & bodies were used to 'shore up' the river banks & arroyos; even those are gone now....It just seems kinda ''odd'' to me, because they were so common, and now it's a different landscape....suppose it's the "time marches on" scenario!....I get giddy when I hear people still finding cool ''stashes'' in unsuspected places!!!
Hey HenryJ1951. I was raised in central Iowa, East of DesMoines in a little farm town between Marshalltown and Grinnell. The erosion control no doubt covered the 55's but the field was (as I recall) just south of Ferguson. I was back a couple of times as a kid for parts from a 39 Chev and a 36 chev truck. Dad left the mid- fifties Packards. I coasted down the hill in one. Both straight 8's. Remember a mid-fifties Ford too. The hill was pretty much covered with old iron, mostly 40's and 50's vintage. Last time I was there was about 1966. Good hunting!
Most of this stuff is gone now because back in President Johnson's time in office, his wife Lady Bird took it upon herself to clean up the countryside. They passed laws and regulations that mandated most of the old cars would be recycled. Thats when a lot of the old junkyards had to put up fences that you couldn't see through so that these "eyesores" to her would not be visible from the road.
Son and I pulled some parts from an abandoned model A in Co. years ago. Used a large crescent wrench to get the head bolts loose. It was a high compression head. Also Rocky Mountain brakes.
Back in 1967 I bought a sectioned 40 Ford convertible in Las Cruces, NM. Trip out took me right through the LBJ ranch (road signage proudly announced). Had to stop and urinate on the property. After all these years, I now know I did the right thing. Just sayin. Lucas
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