Carhenge: How One Man’s Vision Turned Junked Cars Into Art

It’s a hot summer day on the plains of Nebraska. August 21st, 2017. Thousands of people are gathered in a small city called Alliance. Graying couples in floppy sun hats sitting on beach chairs. A group of friends setting out an arrangement of crystals. People in shiny silver bodysuits dressed as extraterrestrials. And even Nebraska’s governor is there. All of them are waiting for the moment when the sun will disappear.

Today is the day of a total solar eclipse, and Alliance is smack dab in the middle of the path of totality—places where the sun will be completely blotted out by the moon. And why they’ve come here to Alliance specifically is because of the giant, hulking monument looming before them.

The sun silently, eerily begins to slide behind the moon, and before everything goes dark, this monument is silhouetted against the vast plains. You can pick out windshields, rearview mirrors, tires.

I’m Amanda McGowan, and this is Atlas Obscura: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today, we’re taking you to Carhenge. It’s a reproduction of Stonehenge but made of cars. When it was built, it sparked a lively debate in this Nebraska town: What is junk and what is art?

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Amanda: If I say the word “Stonehenge,” a picture probably comes to mind. A picture of giant, hulking stones arranged in a circle on a plane in England. Some stand alone; others are grouped to form arches. It’s mysterious, intense, mythical. And if you go to Alliance, Nebraska, you can see a distinctly American interpretation of Stonehenge.

It’s got the same general layout, the same general look, but instead of stones, this henge is made of big old cars, all painted gray to look like the original.

Kaytlin Norris: We’ve got a 64 Cadillac. We’ve got a 65 Ford Galaxy. There’s an ambulance as one of the cars. Lots of different vehicles out there. So very cool.

Amanda: This is Kaytlin Norris. She’s the Head of Tourism for Alliance, Nebraska.

Kaytlin: You can’t find that exact thing anywhere else in the world. I mean, you can go to Stonehenge, but it’s not built of cars. You know, we don’t know a lot about Stonehenge. We do know quite a bit about Carhenge, though.

Amanda: Let’s go back to the origins of Carhenge. A hot June evening in 1987. A thunderstorm is moving in on a family reunion—the Reinders family reunion. And 59-year-old Jim Reinders is the master of ceremonies and the person responsible for bringing the family together.

Kaytlin: So, it was Jim and his family members—about 35 of them, including lawyers, artists, engineers, and heavy equipment operators. Some champagne, poetry, and songs all involved in that, so it sounded like a good time.

Amanda: But the family didn’t get together just to party; they got together to start building. This was all Jim’s idea. Over the past several years, ever since his father died, Jim had been determined to make a memorial for him. Jim had spent some time working in the oil industry in England and fell in love with Stonehenge and the mystery and mysticism around it. And Jim’s late mother, Kay, also was fascinated by Stonehenge.

Kaytlin: Kay Reinders, who passed away in 1977, was an artist who visited Stonehenge several times and was fascinated with the stones. She made paintings of Stonehenge. I believe that [Jim] grew up seeing paintings and things of Stonehenge, so I think he was just very interested in it.

Amanda: So, it seemed pretty obvious: The family had to build a henge out on their farmland in Nebraska. Giant stones proved to be a little too expensive. So they went for something that was easier to come by: used cars.

At the reunion, the family dug the holes for the cars. Jim had plotted out everything a few months before with a detailed map of Stonehenge in hand. They moved the cars into place. Some they stacked into arches. One cousin even sprained her ankle. The process, as Jim described it, took a lot of, quote, blood, sweat, and beer.

But, finally, they were done. And it was time to celebrate.With the storm moving in, they gathered in an army tent on the property.They drank beer. They read poems. They sang a song they’d written about Carhenge to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey.” Jim thanked everybody for all their hard work. And then he gave them a show. They all went outside, and Jim lit the old family outhouse on fire. And then they went to the center of their new henge, Carhenge, and lit another bonfire there, too.

As the fire crackled away, Jim’s daughter, Janice, grabbed a bottle of champagne. It’s, of course, a tradition to christen a new ship before it sets sail by breaking a bottle on the prow. But the flip side of that is, if the bottle doesn’t break, it’s considered bad luck. So, Janice thwacked the champagne bottle against one of the cars of Carhenge, and…it bounced off.

The bad luck started almost immediately.

Kaytlin: It was very controversial in town. There were a lot of residents who didn’t mind it, but there were a lot of residents who were pretty upset by it.

Amanda: Carhenge had been in the ground for only a few days when the complaints started rolling in. The first came from the City of Alliance. They said that Jim’s property was zoned for agricultural use, not for…whatever Carhenge was. And then the state of Nebraska got involved, too. They said that Carhenge was a junkyard, not art, and they demanded that Jim Reinders either put up a wall shielding the view of it from the road or tear Carhenge down. Well, this kicked off a fervent debate and a bit of a media circus.

Kaytlin: And there were quite a few people who actually would write into the newspapers, like, saying, ‘No, this is art. This is actually pop art and you can’t tear it down.’

“It appears to have historical and spiritual significance. My speculation is that Carhenge expresses some primitive spiritual urge applied to one of our contemporary gods, the car. Norman James, Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

“It is a good thing the City of Alliance wasn’t responsible for Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty. They would have sold the Statue of Liberty for scrap metal. Sincerely, Art Thompson.”

Amanda: Jim made his own stance crystal clear. When asked by a local paper whether Carhenge was art, he replied with a quote from Andy Warhol: “Art is whatever you can get away with.” Jim went on to say, “I think that Carhenge is a form of crude art. My mother, Kay, said I was a crude artist, and she would have loved it.”

Eventually, the state decided not to press the junkyard issue, but the City of Alliance pushed forward with its own opposition.

Jim made some efforts to meet the city’s requirements—like buying liability insurance—but other demands were trickier and more expensive. In 1989, the city issued an ultimatum: “Do what we say or Carhenge will be torn down.”

Well, fans of Carhenge were not going to stand for this. They got together and formed an organization, the Friends of Carhenge, and they started raising money to help pay for some of the city’s requirements.

Kaytlin: A lot of people were donating to the cause, and there were T-shirts and hats sold for preserving Carhenge—which, actually—the funds from that helped them make the ease of access road and eventually the parking lot as well. So, people were really fighting for Carhenge to stay relevant.

Amanda: Finally, in November 1989, two years after Carhenge was first built, the paved entryway was complete. The Nebraska State Travel Director even sent along a congratulatory telegram calling Carhenge “an important and unique attraction.”

Carhenge was here to stay.

Fast forward to August of 2017: the solar eclipse. The City of Alliance, population around 8,000 or so, found itself hosting thousands and thousands of people from all over the world who came to see the eclipse at Carhenge, including Nebraska’s governor. Every motel in town booked up months in advance. Once shunned by the City of Alliance, Carhenge is now a symbol of it.

Kaytlin: I’m the Head of Tourism for the City of Alliance, and I use Carhenge in almost every single ad because it draws in so much attention, and I get more questions about Carhenge than I do any of the other attractions in Alliance. Jim put Alliance on the map. He really did. Because Alliance is a very small town community and wouldn’t have the attention on it that it does without Carhenge and without Jim.

Amanda: Jim passed away in October of 2021, and I want to leave you here with something that he said about Carhenge and why he made what he made. I’m quoting him now: “Someday historians will ask, ‘Why?’ not knowing the answer is simply, ‘Why not?’”

Carhenge is open to the public seven days a week, 24-7. The Pit Stop gift shop nearby can satisfy all your Carhenge-themed gift needs and is open from dawn until dusk.

Special thanks to Kaytlin Norris for telling me the story of Carhenge and for sending along an amazing treasure trove of local newspaper articles from the ’80s and ’90s. And of those, I’d like to give a special nod to the reporting of Marilyn Sally from the Star-Herald. It sounds like she had an amazing time at the Reinders family reunion.

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Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Witness Docs. The production team includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Willis Ryder Arnold, Sarah Wyman, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire Ceus, Gianna Palmer, Tracey Samuelson, John DeLore, Peter Clowney.

Our technical director is Casey Holford. This episode was sound designed by Chris Naka and Amanda McGowan. This episode was mixed by Luz Fleming. Our theme and end credit music is by Sam Tindall. And if you would like to learn more, head over to atlasobscura.com.

This story originally ran in 2022; it has been updated for 2026.