Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch

More than 1,000 bottles hang from welded metal trees in the Mojave Desert beside old Route 66, a forest that grew from a father-and-son hobby. San Bernardino County describes the two-acre ranch near Oro Grande as developed in the early 2000s by Elmer Long, the son of Elmer Long Sr., an aviation engineer in Manhattan Beach. Both were avid bottle collectors. Long grabbed old metal pipe and welded tree limbs for the bottles to sit on.

Long told Route magazine that the family began collecting on desert trips in an old Willys Jeep from 1962, and that he began building the ranch in 2000, after taking over his father's collection. Roadtrippers reported in 2019 that Long's father had begun giving the collection away near the end of his life, so Long stepped in to save what remained. Route magazine notes that Hulaville, a nearby bottle-tree attraction that closed in 1997, "no doubt inspired" Long, and Route 66 News likewise says he almost certainly took inspiration from it.