The Gem of the Mother Road

There is a stretch of Route 66 across the Mojave Desert that is a remnant of a time when the road signified dreams and possibility. You won’t need GPS. There are no complex routes, just east or west, going or coming.

Homes are few and far between and turnoffs are unpaved. There are antique stores filled to bursting with things your grandparents once owned. Things that were once the newest and most enviable products, now defunct.

Railroad tracks run alongside the road, the kind for trains so long you’ll make a game of counting the cars. In the distance you can see mountains that are topped with snow for much of the year.

It is the very definition of the open road under an open sky.

Not everyone sees the beauty in the desert. On the surface, it may look monotonous. It may look like a great nothing. But the desert isn’t simple. It’s the kind of terrain that forces you to look closely to see the texture. The unique twists in a Joshua Tree. The purple and yellow wildflowers that are nearly swallowed by their vast surroundings. The openness. You don’t see it until you can’t help noticing it.

It’s the very act of slowing down, of paying attention, that is beautiful.

And Route 66 itself is a thing of beauty. We’ve become used to overpasses and interchanges, concrete slashes across the landscape. Route 66 was built into the land. As you drive, you can feel every curve and swell of the desert. It might lull you into daydreams. You might begin to believe in mirages.

So, maybe you won’t quite know what you’re seeing when you approach Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch. You might hardly pay any attention at first. Just some old bottles and rusted metal. But as you pass by, you’ll find yourself craning for a look. And then you’ll stop, somehow sensing that you need to see this curious assortment up close.

When you walk in through the gate, you step into a singularly striking copse of trees. Elmer’s trees are towering metal structures with glass bottles of every color for branches. If you go when the sun is low, either early or late in the day, the way the light hits the glass gives the bottles a gem-like quality. It makes the colors vibrant and the trees’ shadows loom across the ground.

Among the trees are typewriters, old road signs, and a rusted old car among other paraphernalia. Much like Route 66 itself, the items that compose Bottle Tree Ranch were once innovations that reflected the dreams of prosperity in post-war America.

Is it a celebration of or a memorial to classic Americana?

That may be open to interpretation, but what is undeniable is that the Ranch is a gift for motorists who believe travel is about the journey.

There’s no gift shop. You won’t be charged an entrance fee. Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch isn’t a commercial venture. It just is. It’s art for art’s sake. It’s the kind of art that was built on the experience of a generation and belongs to everyone.

I have to believe that part of its magic is the fact that it couldn’t exist anywhere else. The Mojave Desert is the canvas for this singular work of art, the juxtaposition between the sandy landscape and vibrantly gleaming bottles creating a striking contrast. Route 66 is a road frozen in time, its own mythology overshadowing its purpose as a means of connecting Chicago to the Pacific Coast. After all, Route 66 is still known as the Main Street of America. A decommissioned road still traveled. It’s fitting that a work of art made of an idealized version of America’s past would be positioned on Route 66.

Bottle Tree Ranch yearns for a time that may only exist in our collective imagination. It gives life to the romanticized mythology of the Mother Road. When travel meant going where the land took us. It is the remnants of the American Dream from a specific moment in time. Before its unattainability became apparent.

The past is not nearly as simple as the history books would have us believe. As Americans, there is much of our past that we aren’t proud of. But Route 66 exists in our memory as a defining achievement in our history. When the road first had a soul and road trips became a way of life. It made the journey the destination and allowed people to see the gradual changes in the land as they traveled across the country.

That’s the idealized version, at least. For many traveling west back in the day, Route 66 was a lifeline. It was their final hope. Some would make it and some wouldn’t, but they all clung to the American Dream.

Which brings me back to my question: is Bottle Tree Ranch a celebration or a memorial?

I have to think it’s both.

Route 66 in its prime is a memory most of us don’t have and yet it stirs something in us. It brings to mind the image of long road trips and freedom and wide, open land. But then we remember that it’s gone, decommissioned nearly four decades ago. The Mother Road is gone and we mourn the ghosts of the adventures she once offered.

So, we carve new roads. We find new adventures. And when we do, we honor her memory in the most fitting way. We carry on. We see this great land and we take our time. We stop at road-side attractions made of bottles and old typewriters.

We breathe it in.