This picture violates CC’s protocol for top-of-post images that I have been pushing all our contributors to follow: The featured car must be prominent in the photo so as to be easily identifiable, especially for the majority of folks who read CC on their phones. But there’s a reason I’m doing this, as I almost didn’t see there was a car here when we hiked by in these very remote woods south of the Rogue River. But the glint of light on the still-chromed bumper and the two front fenders made their presence known, and we detoured off the trail to check it out. Yes, it was the remains of a car. But how did it get here? There was no road in the immediate vicinity.
And yes, I shot close-ups of the remains. But I haven’t yet seriously tried to identify it, so help yourselves.
Here it is from the front, with a fallen tree draped over the two peaked front fenders.
The driver’s side fender still has the free-standing headlight nacelle attached. These headlights and the shapes of the fenders narrow the year of this car roughly to the 1934-1937 period. I didn’t get a good shot of it, but the passenger side fender had provision (cutout) for a side-mount spare tire.
Here’s the view from the side.
The steering column still maintained its upward angle.
And the handbrake is also still upright and has kept this car from rolling down the hill for untold decades.
The frame has cruciform bracing members between the main side rails.
The gas tank is a bit worse for wear. But the car’s blue paint has held up quite well.
The rear bumper is in quite good condition still. Now you may be wondering what I was: What happened to the body and drive train? Poking around in the undergrowth next to the car I did find a fair amount of flat sheet metal, some pieces bent in half. One piece had a stamped opening, a window most likely. Car bodies back then were built up of lots of fairly small pieces. The body seems to have either sort of collapsed but more likely sections of its sheet metal were harvested to be repurposed. It’s clearly not all here. As to the engine, transmission and rear axle, your guess is as good as mine.
The answer is probably related to the answer as to how it got here. This is a very remote area; we did not see one single other person or car the whole day. But somewhat surprisingly, there was often more human activity in these remote areas many years ago than there is now. There were logging camps and some mining operations. Curiously, the car sits in a lovely stand of old growth trees that have never been harvested. But there were logged areas not far away. So presumably at one time…this car got pushed here, having had its drivetrain removed, or that was done later. I have no easy answers.
As a frame of reference, we were hiking to Snow Camp Lookout, a former fire lookout deep in the Rogue River National Forest. We keep our little Chevy Tracker in Port Orford and use it for back country exploring. There were some serious washouts from the winter rains, so its ground clearance and 4WD was pretty much essential on this trip early in the season.
The wildflowers everywhere were in peak bloom.
We had never seen these yellow variants of wild irises which are typically shades of lilac, pink and magenta.
The hiking trail to the lookout is three miles long. The lookout is at about 4200′, so there’s quite a bit of a rise above the sea in the background where we started our drive. And its name is of course apt, as there’s plenty of snow up here in the winter. In fact the gate to the road we took had just been opened, but the gate up the last stretch to the lookout was still closed.
The views were stellar in every direction, which of course explains the fire lookout. I didn’t aim that way, but the snowy peaks of the Siskiyou Mountains on the California-Oregon border were very visible.
We decided to make a loop of it and walked back via the road which goes through the bleached skeletons of an old burn. The undergrowth is like a rock garden, and everything was in bloom.
The creeping version of ceanothus was like a carpet of blue.
We drove a different road back too, including some challenging washouts. This is how I love to spend my time: driving on remote and challenging terrain, hiking through wildflower-filled meadows and big trees, and sumitting a mountain. Life is good. Now we just need to identify that car…
If you were a YouTuber you undoubtedly would have had that car running in half an hour and driven it out of there, saving you a long walk.
I have no idea on the car besides that it’s a blue one. But the scenery is spectacular, the weather too seems just about perfect for hiking, not too hot, not too cold, not too sunny, not too dark…
Indeed the chrome and paint are top rate .
I used to love hiking, thank yu for sharing these glorious pictures Paul .
-Nate
Beautiful images.
I remember reading a National Geographic article as a child, that stunned me, at the time. Society as a whole, was not careful at all, how they disposed of garbage. Homesteaders and later farmers, and homeowners, into the twentieth century, would dump garbage, or dead livestock, virtually anywhere on their property. Or on public land. Including immediately right around their homes. Being careless with garbage, was not an exclusively modern problem.
I’ve discovered abandoned cars, in not so deep forests. Where there is usually a back road, reasonably close. Not as remote, as your example.
Great hike, and splendid photos. Nice to see Stephanie and the Tracker making appearances.
About that car, I’m leaning towards GM and I think the distinctive back bumper is the key. The closest I’ve found is 1937 LaSalle but that’s not quite it.
It appears the headlights were mounted on the catwalks, not the radiator surround. I’m no carspotter for that era, but that indicates late 30s to me. I’ve never noticed single side-mounts before.
Do they burn off the hill regularly to maintain the view?
Do they burn off the hill regularly to maintain the view?
No. The lookout is on a rocky knoll, above the trees. That was a forest fire a bit below.