Living in the state of Nevada for over a year has made me realize that the state has this weird and bizarre side to it. From naked nuns posing for money, painted rock monuments stacked up on top of each other, to abandoned towns. All this can make road trips in Nevada fun.

Nevada’s vast desert landscape has its own beauty, but while doing road trips it can become apparent, rather quickly, that there is not a lot of civilization outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area and Reno-Carson City area. The Nevadan desert is not shy of being unusual and this time I found The International Car Forest.

How To Get There

I found this very randomly as I was driving up to a trip to Lake Taho for some snowshoeing. While driving through Nevada’s Highway 95 from Las Vegas I was encroaching the small town of Goldfield. It is considered a ghost town, but you would be surprised by the many buildings that are still standing.

On the outskirts of the town, there is a dirt road to the right that will take you East towards the car forest. You will notice some abandoned trailer homes and vehicles that will give you the impression that you are going through a junkyard. I went after a snowfall and there are parts of the road that have some inclination that caused the vehicle to stall out. So I parked it and walked to it.

Access to this area is very rugged and might be impassable depending on your vehicle type.

International Car Forest Of The Last Church

There isn’t a sign or marker that explains this open-air exhibit, but its official name is The International Car Forest of The Last Church. It was created by Mark Rippie and Chad Sorg in hopes of getting their names into the record books as the most upturned vehicles as part of an art piece. I checked the Guinness Book of World Records and found nothing.

The intent of the exhibit was to make the cars blank canvases for graffiti artists to express their art. You will find over 40 vehicles dug into the ground as well as some stacked upon each other. There are cars, buses, delivery trucks, and vans. These vehicles are colorful and can be a place to take some interesting photos.

Interesting Place For Photographers

You will recognize a wide variety of artwork on these vehicles. You can crawl in some of them and stage some funny photos. Model out there like a junk yard hustler. Either way Its interesting to see cars thrown around like a child left them out after playing with them in the yard.

Below are some photos I took.

I would have to say that the snow makes it a different kind of winter wonderland. I’m glad I got to see this place with snowfall.

Final Thoughts

If you are driving through Nevada and somehow get close to the ghost town of Goldfield or just driving through Nevada’s Highway-95, this is a place worth stopping at. You won’t be disappointed in seeing something different.

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What are some of the most random things you have run into while doing road trips? Leave a comment below. I would love to hear about it.

• adventure
• ghosttown
• junkcars
• nevada
• roadtrip