|
By
Nino Padova
Litto’s Hubcap Ranch, in California’s eastern Napa Valley, deserves its reputation as the West’s oddest and shiniest roadside attraction, with some 5,000 chrome hubcaps strung up along a quarter mile of fence (and trees and sheds). This remarkable collection—state landmark No. 939—started in the 1930s, when Litto Damonte began setting out hubcaps knocked loose by the area’s unpaved roads, hoping they’d be retrieved. Instead, people kept adding more.
Today his grandson, Mike Damonte, tends the ranch and welcomes visitors and their picnics at no charge. "Sometimes I’ll come home and there’ll be a big bag of hubcaps in the driveway," he says. 6654 Pope Valley Rd. (off Highway 29, a half hour northeast of St. Helena).
|
online
