EDGAR — In the small town of Edgar in Carbon County (between Laurel and Bridger, about 35 miles south of Billings), the lone bar and restaurant is no longer the only thing driving people to the community.
A fairly new garden has been planted at the end of Elwell Street, right before the train tracks.
“You pack the dirt in very carefully, water them, the dirt settles, you add more dirt. Yeah, it’s a process,” said Edgar resident Greg Nelson.
But Nelson isn't talking about planting flowers. He is talking about planting cars into the ground.
“This is Fordhenge,” Nelson said. “I was always fascinated with Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska, and last summer I got the chance to go see it. And after seeing it, I thought, you know, I could do a whole lot better than that.”
So Nelson used his knowledge gained from working on cars and got to work creating a 16-car art piece.
Nelson also added flowers in and around the cars and memorial trees around the art piece.
Nelson has Fords from the 1950s to the 1960s featured either stacked on top of each other, buried into the ground, or just sitting as is.
“If I had put all of them in just straight upright and everything, it would be rather boring. So I kind of let the art happen as it happens. And it works,” Nelson said.
Other Edgar residents agree that the art piece "works" for their town.
“Now, (Nelson has) sort of now become a landmark for Edgar," resident Nev Harding said. "It should be a tourist attraction. It’s a nice addition to Edgar.”
Denise Mass, who has lived in Edgar for 10 years, agreed: “Yeah, and it’s very pleasing to look at."
Harding remembers when Nelson was getting started on the project about a year and a half ago.
“It started out to be just a bunch of parked cars, and then almost overnight he started this creation," Harding said. "In a few days, it started to take shape. It was fantastic."
Nelson said there is still more work to do for his art piece.
“I still need a ‘52 Ford in here,” he said. “Eventually I would like to do a mural on this back wall with the scene from the Radiator Springs in the Cars movie. I think that would be a nice way to finish off that wall.”
The back wall that Nelson mentioned is currently covered in "No Trespassing" signs. He said it's not to be unfriendly, but rather for insurance purposes.
He welcomes anyone to drive by and stop for a bit to take photos.
“It’s just kind of neat thing that I thought I wanted to do and it turned out pretty slick,” he said.
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