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All Things N ebraska
I like to drive, and Nebraska gives you plenty of opportunities.
The state’s best road trip might be up the old Oregon Trail, past Chimney Rock to Scotts Bluff. Scenic. Historic.
In the fall, you can’t beat wandering the hills around Indian Cave State Park. Driving along Highway 12 from Ponca to Niobrara is a close second. Colors galore.
The Sand Hills are beautiful in spring, with wildflowers blooming. And you can’t beat driving through the Pine Ridge after a fresh snow – as long as it’s not blowing sideways! But I almost bounced out of my boots the other day when driving back from seeing an old friend in western South Dakota. Along Interstate 90, just east of the Badlands, a group of old firetrucks were jutting out of the ground in circular shape, in an apparent attempt to replicate Nebraska’s own Carhenge. Carhenge, as any good Cornhusker knows, was built in 1987 just north of Alliance. It consists of 38 junk cars aligned just like Stonehenge, and draws 100,000 tourists a year.
I once had to cover the summer solstice at Carhenge and was amazed when nearly 20 people appeared at sunrise, including a carload of students from Fort Collins, Colorado. They had driven through the night, drawn by the magic of a bunch of Mercurys, Fords and Oldsmobiles buried in the prairie.
The new “Firehenge” was the wild and crazy idea of a former Nebraskan, Bob Fuchs, who graduated from Omaha Burke High School. He owns a brewpub located in an old firehouse in Rapid City.
Fuchs loves old fire trucks, which he has parked next to his Firehouse Brewing billboards along the interstate.
Pretty clever (and, he says, pretty effective marketing) but do you have to try to out-do the Cornhusker State’s craziest collection of old cars?
Well, once I settled down a bit and took a suck on my road coffee, the realization struck that Carhenge, itself, was a replica, one intended to be like the prehistoric ring of huge stones in England called “Stonehenge.”
And, doing some more research, you discover that Carhenge is one of dozens of attempts to capture the Druid magic of Stonehenge, which was erected some 5,000 years ago during the pre-cell phone era.
Stonehenge served as a solar calendar, with stones aligned to capture the first sunlight during the summer and winter solstices – you know, before our cell phones told us when the sun was going to rise and set.
Years ago, I was summoned to Chadron where locals thought a local rancher had erected a “Hayhenge” on his ranch northeast of town.
Being the skeptical reporter, I eyed the suspected bales of alfalfa with great suspicion, and concluded that the hedge of hay was probably just a circle of big bales. Talk about being no fun.
But across the U.S., there’s plenty of fun-loving honorary hedges. In Virginia, there’s a “Foamhenge” (made out of foam) and near Topeka, Kansas, a “Truckhenge” (out of old farm trucks).
There’s a “Phonehenge” in South Carolina fashioned out of old British phone booths, and there once was a “Phonehenge West” built out of old telephone poles in California.
The oldest henge replica in the U.S. was a memorial to World War I casualties, dedicated in 1918 on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River in Washington State near an experimental Quaker community called Maryville. It took 12 years to complete the Maryville Stonehenge, which was built out of reinforced concrete.
There’s Stonehenge wannabes all over, you discover, in Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Texas (go figure), North Dakota and Notre Dame, among others.
My favorite copycat might be “Stonefridge,” which was built out of old refrigerators at an old landfill near Santa Fe, New Mexico. But alas, the locals were not amused and the display was torn down.
The 40th anniversary of Carhenge is coming up, and I’m sure there will be a huge celebration for the state’s most famous collection of cars.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking that the entire henge genre hasn’t been covered quite yet. I’ve got some extra plywood in the garage ….
Paul Hammel has covered state government for decades. Prior to his retirement, he was senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald.
