PORT ANGELES — This property probably was pretty once. Now it’s so strewn with rusting cars, leaking batteries and rotting tires that a visitor stands transfixed by the volume of junk and its variety, not the vistas of pastures and fields.
“It’s a beautiful piece of land, actually,” said Rob Robertsen, Clallam County community development director, as he surveyed almost two acres of castoffs ranging from trucks to the tiny pieces of a scattered jigsaw puzzle.
“It could be a beautiful piece of property again.”
That’s what the land’s new owner, Mark Thomas, hopes to make out of the site at 212 Lewis Road, which is about seven miles east of Port Angeles.
On Wednesday, however, his hopes looked mighty high.
The ground was littered by engines without cars and cars without engines — whole cars, half cars, quarter cars, doors and hoods.
Some of the vehicles were crammed with trash. One was filled with computer monitors and printers.
A battered fiberglass runabout bore the spray-painted message, “4FREE. Good fixer.”
A pickup bed bore thousands of red, yellow, blue and green shotgun shell casings.
“This is typical of what these sites look like,” said Robertsen, threading his way around eviscerated automobiles, a roll of chain-link fencing and an orphaned window box of tulips.
“They’re private junkyards.”
