Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch

Elmer Long's Bottle Tree RanchFragile Routes

Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch was born in 2000, after Elmer Long inherited the vast collection of glass bottles his father had collected from the California desert. Said to have been inspired by an installation he saw at the now-bulldozed Miles Mahan’s Half Acre, Elmer welded together a hat-rack-like “tree” and topped it with colorful glass bottles. 200 more followed, creating a small forest of glass and metal, as well as some other odds and ends ranging from a typewriter to a bomb. While the future of Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch was uncertain following Elmer’s death in 2019, his son has since taken up the eccentric mantle to share his father’s folk art forest with travelers on Route 66.