In California, there used to be a place called Memory Lane. I think they've gone out of business. If so, their inventory must have been bought. Does anyone know what has become of this place? Does anyone have leads I can follow up on for bone yards in California. I'm in need of many parts for a 1969 Skylark. Google has not been much help.
memory lane quit their business in 2005 or 2006 no clue where all the stuff went but even if i did: i dont think there is much of the old inventory left after all those years Memory Lane 11311 Pendleton Street Sun Valley, California 91352 (800) AT 1 YARD (800-281-9273) this was their website: http://www.oldautoparts.com
11311 Pendleton Street, Sun Valley, 91352 Just up the block from Pick-Your-Part — so close, in fact, that LKQ annexed its parking lot when it moved south to Wilmington, before going out of business altogether in 2006 – was Memory Lane, a pre-1975-only collector car yard. A time-warp in more ways than one, stories abound in local lore of the owner’s irascibility and shady dealings. Most are apocryphal, but one piece of hearsay is certainly true: when the business finally went under, it crushed, with an almost vindictive speed, untold thousands of vintage cars and parts. Today, the old entrance is walled off, and the lot has been absorbed by a cardboard recycling facility.
Interesting story. Never knew exactly what happened with that yard. If they crushed out in 2006, that is pretty much when scrap peaked. Their story sounds slightly similar to "buick bonery" which was in Sacramento. Biggest remaining classic yards that am aware of are 1. DVAP - may be the biggest, they absorbed Hidden Valley a few years ago and are in process of moving farther N out of Phoenix metro. Hidden Valley was the second largest specialty yard in Arizona 2. CTC - may be winding down, did offer them all my remaining large parts, one of the owners stated they are no longer buying caches or estates of parts and or cars. 3. Wildcat Wrecking - a Mopar specialty yard in Oregon As many as six informal older cars/parts yards in both Alamogordo and Roswell crushed out about 12-15 years ago. Many did take advantage of the spike in scrap prices and cashed out. Wild Bills, North 54 Salvage, etc. Part of Vaughn NM used to be filled with some guys informal yard. Today that is all gone.
i remember going to memory lane, there was this lady running the office, here name was tricia anyway, i came across the above info about crushing the inventory on this website here is the whole story about the sun valley junkyards: My L.A. in Four Locations: Junkyards By: Robert Matt Taylor JANUARY 15, 2019 My L.A. in Four Locations is a running feature in which Angelenos share the story of their city through four specific places. This week, Robert Matt Taylor takes us on a tour of the Sun Valley’s junkyards. At the U-Pull yard (or junkyard or wrecking yard or recycler or dismantler), self-guidance is the definitive condition: you pay a small fee at entry, tote your own tools, and you provide the labor to extract what parts you need, in exchange for deep discounts. The junkyard is, of course, where cars go to die, but it’s much more than that — it is a place where some of the least-visible Angelenos go to salvage something usable out of refuse, a stronghold of conservation and self-reliance. It’s a classroom for the mechanically-inclined, a natural film set, and a repository of dreams for greasy teenagers (and adults) with shoestring budgets and visions of automotive glory. It is also, very often, the only means by which those obsolete but beautiful artifacts of the high automotive age — by which I mean old cars — can find a way to survive.It is connected, in almost too many ways to mention, to the diverse strands of subculture that form the fabric of our city’s identity. Of the two major hubs of junkyard activity in the city — Wilmington, near the Port of Los Angeles, and Sun Valley to the north — I prefer the northern. To me, the junkyards of Sun Valley offer a picture of what Los Angeles really is, in its estimable dirt and bounty. 11201 Pendleton Street, Sun Valley, 91352 — LKQ Pick-Your-Part — El Pulpo, as it’s known to its mostly Spanish- or Spanglish-speaking regulars, a reference to the rare six-armed octopus of its logo — is actually one of a nationwide chain of auto recyclers, but you would be hard-pressed to find a wrecker that seems more distinctly Angeleno. In this corner of L.A., you’ll only ever hear it referred to as thejunkyard, largely because El Pulpo has for years been grabbing up the smaller and older yards in the area with every spare tentacle. They’re just about the only game in town these days, as self-serve goes, and they know it. Visit during one of their quarterly 40-percent-off sales to witness a veritable Mardi Gras of grease. 11590 Tuxford Street, Sun Valley, 91352 — Opened in 1961, Aadlen Bros. U-Pick Parts was the classical representation of an L.A. wrecking yard, from whence sprang countless thousands of the grass-roots hot rods and lowriders that came to define L.A.’s automotive style to the world. The yard made its first film appearance in the 1967 adaptation of In Cold Blood, and quickly became a favorite shooting location and incidental museum for cast-off props of all shapes and sizes over the ensuing four decades. The most famous of these artifacts, Bruce — one of the original mechanical sharks used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws — once perched atop a pole near the entrance, frozen in mid-bite. In 2015, plummeting scrap metal prices forced closure. A tire business still operates under the Aadlen Bros. name at the eastern corner of the lot, but the facility is mostly rented for storage now, and scarcely a shadow of its colorful former self. 11311 Pendleton Street, Sun Valley, 91352 — Just up the block from Pick-Your-Part — so close, in fact, that LKQ annexed its parking lot when it moved south to Wilmington, before going out of business altogether in 2006 – was Memory Lane, a pre-1975-only collector car yard. A time-warp in more ways than one, stories abound in local lore of the owner’s irascibility and shady dealings. Most are apocryphal, but one piece of hearsay is certainly true: when the business finally went under, it crushed, with an almost vindictive speed, untold thousands of vintage cars and parts. Today, the old entrance is walled off, and the lot has been absorbed by a cardboard recycling facility. 11087 Tuxford Street, Sun Valley, 91352 — Two blocks to the southeast of the old Memory Lane location sits Master Auto Parts, one of the last remaining independent auto parts stores in the city. Opened in 1968, MAP has become something of a museum of local junkyard history. The artifacts here aren’t physical; business has slowed to the point that MAP has had to pivot to embrace the slicker, more well-monied market of classic car restorers and Hollywood productions, but it remains a vital trading post for the kind of cultural knowledge that is so easily lost in this city, in this time. ¤ Photographs by Kenton Harris. ¤ Robert Matt Taylor is a writer, editor, and part-time mechanic living on the outskirts of Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Sugar House Review, Main Street Rag, and other journals. A recent fellow in Fiction Writing at Chapman University, he is at present a candidate in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. link: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/my-la-junkyards/
There’s one in Goodyear AZ that has over 40 1968-69 Skylarks sitting there for you to pick at, can’t remember the name but I was just there this year.
Man, some of these guys I don't understand. I've had this car of mine for 20 years. My grandmother was the original owner, down through my uncles to me then my son and his son I hope. But I need a hood. "68-69 GS hood. It's like looking for the Holy Grail.
