The Roadrunner Made of Old Shoes and Volkswagen Headlights (Las Cruces, NM)

We missed this guy on the way out to Arizona. He’s at a rest stop on Interstate 10 just west of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and we were on the wrong side of the highway to get to him. We could see him, we just couldn’t reach him, which is a special kind of annoying when you’re driving a bus. So on the way back, when we were hightailing it out of New Mexico, we made sure we stopped. He was the only stop we made on that whole drive, and he was worth the wait.

Made of Everything

He’s about 20 feet tall, and he’s made entirely of recycled materials. The belly is old shoes, the eyes are Volkswagen headlights, and the rest of him is a pile of salvaged stuff like bike parts and appliance parts. There is a lot of random stuff in every part of this roadrunner. I love anything that’s built out of things other people threw away, and this one is a whole bird.

Where He Came From

The roadrunner is the work of a local artist, Olin Calk, who built him in the early 1990s out of junk from the Las Cruces city dump. He was moved to the rest stop in 2000, which is how a bird made of trash ended up as the welcome sign for travelers heading into town.

If You’re Passing Through

He’s a quick stop, right off the interstate, and the rest area has plenty of room to pull in. We fit the bus without any trouble. If you’re driving west and spot him across the highway, you’ll have the same problem we did, so make a note to catch him on the way back.

Heading through the rest of the state? Our Things to Do in New Mexico page has more. And this was part of the same long drive as the World’s Largest Jackrabbit in Odessa, Texas, our first stop on the way out.

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