Gearhead Americana: Amazing Photos Of Junkyards And Car Crashes 1930-1942 From The Library Of Congress Archive


Gearhead Americana: Amazing Photos Of Junkyards And Car Crashes 1930-1942 From The Library Of Congress Archive

As you know, we’re absolute suckers for Americana and historic photos here in the halls of BangShift.  I have recently been spending lots of time trolling the Library of Congress’s digital photo archive and as you’ll see in the coming weeks, these amazing old photos will serve as the basis for a bunch of blog content. Today’s dispatch will take back in time to awesome junkyards and to the scenes of car crashes in the 1930’s and 1940’s. There are a couple of color photos in here, but most of them are black and white. They are all pretty magical in our book.

All of these photos, especially the ones with people in them, capture great moments in time. From the two junkyard workers sitting on what looks to be the back half of an old truck frame, to the auto wrecker in the midst of parting out an old sedan, to the big truck stack 15-feet tall with ancient car bodies, it is fascinating stuff. One of the crash photos shows a completely demolished old touring car which we believe is a Stutz…or what is left of a Stutz. Hopefully the occupants were thrown clear and survived because the car was annhiliated.

Unfortunately, there is no way to credit the photographers here because even the Library of Congress does not have that information. Scroll through and pay attention to the details. We sincerely wish we had a time machine to zip back an insert ourselves in some of theses scenes. Gearhead Americana, what’s better than that?

A destroyed armored car

Building wreckers hard at work

A snowy car crash

Another angle of the snowy car crash

A wrecked car and truck

Another angle of the wrecked car and truck

A destroyed Stutz

Old car bodies heading to the scrapper

A junkyard man hard at work

Two junkyard men taking a car apart

Junkyard photo in stunning color

An amazing junkyard scene

Another junkyard

Cars being scrapped

Wall at Junkyard

Ancient engines

Junkyard workbench

Junkyard workbench

Men at junkyard on coffee break

Rumley Oil Pull tractor at junkyard

Car at Junkyard

Tires being loaded onto junkyard truck


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