Do you like forests or maybe botanical gardens, exploring different plants and trees? What about a forest full of ‘planted’ cars? Trust me, it’s a very unusual installation! One should have a real talent to transform junk pieces into art masterpieces and the International Car Forest of the Last Church is living proof of that. There are more than 40 cars, trucks, buses partially buried in the ground, and even a boat. In fact, it is the largest in the country.
It’s up to you to decide whether it’s a car graveyard, a junkyard, or an art installation. Anyway… International Car Forest today is a well-known landmark that welcomes many visitors and photographers from all over the world every year.
Standing on the edge of Goldfield, a tiny historic mining town booming once in the past, this rusted-out installation was its part for a while.
The project had been started by Goldfield resident Mark (Michael) Rippie whose desire was to beat the Guinness Book record for the amount of “most cars planted vertically in the ground“. Most likely he was inspired by Carhenge in Nebraska which was made as a replica of the famous Stonehenge and had 39 cars. To beat the challenge he should have used more than 40 cars, so be it said Mark, and started his own forest on his own 80-acres land.
In a year artist from Reno, Chad Sorg accidentally saw the first car planted by Mark and fell in love. They teamed up and started the implementation of that long-running project that lasted for more than 10 years and ended in 2013.
Unlike Cadillac Ranch in Texas, seems that International Forest attracted more creative people. New graffiti that kept appearing as a community effort has much more designs and cool pictures rather than just people’s names written in bright colors.
Duet eventually fell apart because of the opposition of their characters… As people say Sorg had a very inspirational artistic vision of the project and Mark’s primary idea was to beat a record rather than invest more into the art side.
By the way, our friend Wall-E was super excited and didn’t want to leave!
Enjoy a couple more interesting facts while looking at posing Wall-E. He could even find a car right for his size!
It’s called as International Forest of The Last Church because of Mark’s belief. That has nothing to do with organized religion and the only thing where it’s mentioned is a spooky small site created by Rippie.
A standing bus was burnt during the End of the World Party (the Far End) that Sorg held in the Forest to introduce it to the outer world in August 2012. That performance was like Burning Man but with the bus.
In 2013, shortly after finishing the Forest, Rippie was convinced to 2 years in jail because of illegal possession of firearms. Police found more than 15 firearms at his house including 2 loaded semi-automatic assault-type rifles. Apparently, Rippie was well-known to law enforcement and had 13 arrests previously, including six involving firearms. He even was committed to a mental institution before.
Nowadays Rippie still living in Goldfield. And Sorg still doing some artwork primarily in Nevada and blogging, and you can easily find him on Instagram and Youtube.
Be careful as there are no signs off highway 95 pointing to the museum, so check google maps in advance to find the directions.
Admission/Facilities
Admission free. Open Every day. No facilities and/or services.
