This Old Car

When I first saw this car along side of a back road going from Beaver Dam, Arizona to St. George Utah, I decided to see if I could track down the story behind it. I spoke with Utah police, Arizona police, and folks who lived in Beaver Dam. And here's what I learned.

Highway 91 is the back road in question. There are no services, it's high desert; rain storms are few and far between; however, there's a trickle of water that has been known to flood the road during years when storms abound.

The last time this occurred was an El Niño year during the winter of 2005/2006. A section of the Virgin river (probably 10/15 miles away from this area as the crow flies) ran amok and destroyed many homes.

The Arizona locals decided they did not want to have a similar fate. The solution that someone came up with was to have old junk yard cars brought into the area and placed in the culvert that runs beside the road to prevent the occasional flooding that does occur.

Someone I talked with said 50 cars had been brought in. I frankly distrust that version of the story since it came from a grizzled and very plastered old timer who hung out at the Dillon Dam bar. From the bits and pieces of debris that I saw along the road, I would judge the experiment involved two or three cars at most. And the Arizona policeman I talked to said they they would be delighted to haul the car and place it in the front yard of the home I then owned. I declined

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it with proof positive in the form of a few images.



Carol