Entry No. 4 — the Durango file — filed under: roadside-oddity
Creations from Mufflers
Three miles north of Cortez, a dirt-road corner becomes a town of white-painted metal people — Floyd has been tacking them together out of mufflers, pipes, and bike parts since ’93. “I was never a welder! Just tack and cover with cheap paint,” his sign admits. The residents plow with a tractor, wrestle a stubborn ox, pound a saloon piano, and fish a little pond. Save Boot Hill for last: its epitaphs record deaths by barstool-tripping and second-fastest draw.
The story
Three miles north of Cortez where County Road P hits Road 25.6, a local named Floyd decided in 1993 that the dirt corner needed a town. He didn't go to art school, and he didn't buy fine materials. He took discarded exhaust mufflers, tailpipes, rusty iron rods, and dead bicycle frames, tack-welded them into human skeletons, and slathered the whole population in cheap white latex paint. As his own hand-painted sign bluntly warns visitors: 'I was never a welder! Just tack and cover with cheap paint.'
What sits along the fence line is an entire silver-white frontier settlement caught mid-chore. You'll find figures plowing dry dirt with a metal tractor, wrestling a stubborn pipe-ox, sitting at a pond edge with a makeshift fishing pole, and pounding away at an iron saloon piano. It’s an eerie, starkly monochrome slice of folk art that feels like an alternate-dimension ghost town dropped right into Montezuma County farmland.
Don't just snap a quick photo from your driver's seat and leave. Walk the row and save Boot Hill for your final stop. Floyd’s sense of humor shines brightest on the grave markers, which forgo romantic Western heroics to memorialize realistic frontier demises like tripping off a barstool and holding the title of second-fastest draw.
What it's like
You're pulling off CO-145 onto a dusty dirt intersection with zero parking lots or gift shops. Park well over on the dirt shoulder along County Road P and keep off the driving lane. Because this is Floyd's private residence and the scrap-metal figures are held together by light spot welds, stay on the roadside edge and keep your hands off the art. The ground is dry dirt and gravel—fine in sneakers, just dusty. Walk the fence line, drop a few dollars into the roadside donation box to fund Floyd's white paint supply, and keep an eye out: Floyd himself sometimes wanders out into the yard to share the backstory of individual mufflers.
The move: Turn off CO-145 onto County Road P, walk the rows of white figures reading each scene’s gag aloud to each other, then pick which Boot Hill epitaph you’d each want.
📍 Before you go The figures stand at the dirt intersection of County Road P and Road 25.6, about three miles north of Cortez: take CO-145 north, turn west onto Road P, and pull well off onto the shoulder — there is no lot. It is private property, not a park, so stick to the roadside viewing areas and keep hands off the tack-welded figures; a donation box stands in for admission, and Floyd himself sometimes appears to tell the stories behind individual pieces. The ground is flat and dusty, fine in any shoes when dry. Pair it with Cortez’s giant cow on Lakeside Drive or a Mesa Verde run on the way back toward Durango.
- 📍 Cortez
- 💸 Free
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Outdoors
Where: County Road P at Road 25.6, Cortez, CO 81321 (about 3 miles north of Cortez off CO-145)
Hours: Added 2026-06-11 — confirm current hours before you go.
Pair it with
- Notah-Dineh Trading Company & Museum — Head four miles south into Cortez afterward to contrast Floyd's raw roadside metalwork with four generations of trading post history and a vast collection of historic Navajo rugs.
- Rio Grande Southern Railroad Museum (Galloping Goose No. 5) — Drive six miles north to Dolores to see Galloping Goose No. 5—another legendary Southwest Colorado creation built out of spare auto parts and sheer necessity.
- Dave Sipe's Folk Art — If you appreciate self-taught local eccentrics, head east toward Mancos where Dave Sipe carves dead county wood into wild chainsaw sculptures.
- Yucca House National Monument — Pair Floyd's modern junk-art town with Yucca House, an unexcavated 600-room Ancestral Puebloan site buried under scrubby mounds just south of town.
Good to know
Where do I park when visiting?
There is no parking lot. Pull completely off onto the wide dirt shoulder on County Road P near Road 25.6, clear of passing traffic.
How much does it cost to look around?
Viewing from the roadside is free, but there is a donation box posted along the fence line to help cover Floyd's material costs.
Can I touch or climb on the metal sculptures?
No. The sculptures sit on private property and are light tack-welded metal; stay on the public shoulder side of the perimeter.
How long should I spend here?
Plan for 15 to 30 minutes to walk the full row, read every Boot Hill gravestone, and examine how bicycle parts and muffler pipes were repurposed.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Atlas Obscura · Roadside America · boingboing.net · saltproject.co
last checked: 2026-06-11