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?