Signs and found objects mix with discarded glass bottles.

Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch

Oro Grande, California

Elmer Long was an inventive scrap material artist. He filled his front yard with a dense forest of bottle trees. Over 200 trees made from upright metal pipes bristle with discarded glass bottles on every welded branch. Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch is well known due to its location along U.S. Route 66, west of Barstow.

Born in 1946, Long moved with his family to the California desert in 1970, where he married, and then raised two sons. Elmer's father had always collected old bottles; Elmer inherited that hoard, and continued to add to it. Trained as a welder, Elmer worked in a cement factory, so he had skills coveted by any scrap artisan. He erected his first bottle tree in 2000. That same day, Elmer noticed Route 66 travelers pulling off along the road to snap photos of his outsider art.

Elmer went full-time on bottle forest creation in 2002, and the array increased in density and scale. He lived in the house behind it, and continued expanding and modifying the Ranch almost until the day he died on June 22, 2019. Visitors have always been free to wander the site, and there's a wooden wishing well in the back for donations.

Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch lies conveniently along Route 66.

A bomb casing among the bottle trees.

The bottle tree pipes are tightly arranged, with enough room for tourists to walk between most and admire his handiwork. Some sculptures are decorated with bottles by color, vintage or brand. Most appear to be beer or liquor bottles. A few feature glass and ceramic power pole insulators.

Elmer also incorporated consumer objects -- old metal toys, old radios, wheel rims, manual typewriters, rusting tools and appliances. Some things seem more by design than others. The old jeep with the eaten-away seats... art or utility?

This is an excellent roadside attraction, free and open (as are most folk art environments), and welcoming appreciative eyeballs. The parking area is just the wide unpaved shoulder on both sides of this long bypassed stretch of relatively lightly traveled highway. We parked past the frontage fence to allow unobstructed photos. During our bottle tree ranch experience another dozen travelers arrived, all from outside the U.S. Some had seen it on YouTube.

Bottles flower on welded branches.

It's an obvious shutterbug and selfie haven. Elmer sprinkled around old road signs, a peeling A&W restaurant menu board, and various petroliana artifacts. A vintage practice bomb casing is impaled on a pipe -- perhaps a statement on war, or a statement on the availability of ordnance in the flight test-happy high desert.

On a windy day, the bottles emit sounds -- pleasing or eerie, depending on your taste in randomly whistled bottle music. Though we didn't encounter hazards during our visit, keep in mind that bottles occasionally break, and there are many abraded and rusting shin-level gewgaws.

So tread carefully, snap your pictures, and leave a donation!