Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch

Can you find Lil Dude Troll?

 Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch at 24266 National Trails Highway (Route 66) in Oro Grande, California is a must stop for travelers of the Mother Road. When you arrive, you know immediately you have arrived at some place different, a special place built and assembled by some special person.

Pull off the road and park on the narrow dirt strip in front of the "ranch." Bottles and a lot of odd, old stuff is everywhere. But this is not like a normal junk yard; this is an interesting, weirdly artful junk yard - bottle trees everywhere you look; typewriters, cash registers, wrist watches, galvanized tubs all arranged with various colored bottles to form what I guess would be called modern art or perhaps interpretive art would be a better name for it. Not hundreds of bottles, thousands and thousands of bottles. It's weird and it's interesting and you will have a great time just wondering around the place.

Elmer has spent a lot, a whole lot of time putting his
bottle tree ranch together

Elmer Long is the artist behind the Bottle Ranch. He used to go with his dad out into the desert and collect the objects they found, including many, many bottles. After his father passed away, Elmer was left with all of these bottles and other objects with no idea what to do with them. He finally decided to craft a bottle tree and in the year 2000 when he was finished, he liked the way the light shown through the bottles and the melody the wind created as it flowed over them so much that he decided to make another one. He hasn't stopped yet and now there are more than 200 "trees."

Check out the full blog entry on our sister site 1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Lil Dude has plenty of time on his hands.