Amarillo, Texas

In 1974, a group of architects and artists called Ant Farm buried ten Cadillacs nose-first in a Texas wheat field. The cars, spanning 1949 to 1963, trace the rise and fall of the tail fin—inspired by a kids' book one of them found in a bar. They pitched the idea to eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh 3, who called it 'an irrelevant and silly proposition'—and funded it anyway. The cars are angled at the same tilt as the pyramids of Giza. Originally in a wheat field, the whole thing was moved two miles west in 1997 to a cow pasture along Interstate 40. Visitors are tacitly encouraged to walk through an unlocked gate and spray-paint the cars—the artists wanted that. The cars get repainted constantly: white for a commercial, pink for Marsh's wife's birthday, black for an artist's death, rainbow for Pride. In 2024, for the 50th anniversary, co-founder Chip Lord led a repaint in gray primer as a 'reset.' Want to know more about the Ant Farm collective?

The Ranchotel in Amarillo, Texas, was completed in 1940. It was a motel popular with travelers using the historic U.S. highway system. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, 1995. That's the story in a nutshell—a roadside stop that earned its place in history.

A hotel that's been empty since 1978 — and they're planning to reopen it as a luxury hotel in 2029. That's the Herring Hotel. It opened in 1926, named after Cornelius Taylor Herring, who built it. Then in 1966 it closed and became a government office. By 1978 it was vacant. Now, after nearly fifty years of silence, someone's betting big on its comeback.

In 1930, the Baldwin Locomotive Works built a 2-10-4 'Texas' type steam locomotive for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. They numbered it 5000 and immediately nicknamed it the 'Madame Queen.' It was a unique machine—the Santa Fe's only locomotive of its class. The Texas type is essentially a Berkshire with an extra driving axle, designed for heavy freight. The Madame Queen served for decades, then was donated to the city of Amarillo, Texas in 1957. As of 2023, the Railroad Artifact Preservation Society maintains it, and it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1937, a building went up in downtown Amarillo that was meant to say something about America. It was a post office and courthouse, designed by Texas architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, with murals by Julius Woeltz of New Orleans. But here's the thing: the style it chose—a mix of Art Deco and Moderne—was part of a short-lived movement called the American Renaissance. It tried to borrow from Renaissance Italy to celebrate American themes. And then it just… stopped. No distinctive path. The building itself has been altered over the years—air conditioning, renovations, parking lots swallowing the green space. But the main lobby and the district courtroom still hold echoes of that original idea.