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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Weekend Road Trip: Tinkertown

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It took Ross Ward more than 40 years to build Tinkertown, an indescribable array of carvings, figurines, and folk art. The project became both a source of inspiration for young artists, and an unexpected refuge for Ross himself. This episode is part of our Weekend Road Trip Series, where we bring you stories of the strange, incredible, and wondrous places right here in the United States, that you can see from the road. This series was produced in partnership with T-Mobile.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

There's this place in Sandia Park, New Mexico, called Tinker Town.

0:08.8

Describing it is not easy.

0:11.3

Tanya Ward Goodman is going to give it a shot.

0:18.4

Well, I think the first thing that I would tell you is that you hear the sound of tree branches scraping on metal roof.

0:26.9

And there is this lovely aroma of ponderosa and this kind of butterscotch-like air.

0:35.1

And you'll hear the like buzz of hummingbirds as you're coming down the driveway.

0:41.2

And then you'll notice under your feet that kind of like hollow sound of the boardwalk,

0:47.3

which guides you down into the floor covered with horseshoes embedded into the concrete.

0:56.0

And then you kind of wind through.

0:58.0

And the first thing you'll see is a little woodcarved animated band.

1:04.0

So this little animated band kind of cranks to life and they move and tap their feet.

1:10.0

And then you kind of walk and they move and tap their feet.

1:17.9

And then you kind of wander back through a little swinging gate,

1:20.2

and you go down the boardwalk,

1:22.6

and the first thing you see is the western town.

1:35.2

There's a general store and a hotel and a giant toy store that my dad always said, you know, a town this size in the Old West would not have had a toy store this large.

1:37.9

But I built this town and I like toys stores.

1:42.0

And on the other side, you'll see all these collections.

1:47.2

And there's ice tongues and telephone pole insulators and souvenir bullet pencils,

1:49.8

and you don't even know what you're going to see next,

1:52.6

and you think, wow, I've seen everything.

1:54.4

And then you round the corner and you're in the circus room.

...

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