DIY off-roaders clean up 5M pounds of trash from public lands

Every year, a group of “Mad Max” level car enthusiasts and public lands lovers gather for their own kind of “Burning Man.” 

They all coalesce on national forest lands near Madras, Oregon, where they show off their DIY rigs and compete to collect the most trash. It’s called the Gambler 500.

“We are a disorganized group of people who like to drive bad cars, go camping, and pick up trash on public lands,” one participant, Rowan Sharman, writes on his blog. 

Gambler 500 started in 2014 by Tate Morgan and “the OG Gamblers,” a small group eager to join in on “cheap fun” for a good cause. Since then, the original Oregon event has become the flagship meetup for Gamblers across the globe, but local groups also organize their own satellite versions.

Here’s the gist: For one weekend in the summer, participants sign up to meet at Crooked River National Grassland, where they bring their “junky cars,” all of which are purchased for $500 or less. Then, they use those vehicles to “race” to collect as much trash as possible.

And the vehicles are designed to grab attention; They’re heavily modified, painted or decorated with vibrant designs, and some even topped with dragons spitting real flames, according to KUOW, Oregon’s NPR affiliate. 

One participant at the 2026 event, held on June 27-28, was eager to show off his “Lam-boat-ghini,” a hybrid between a Buick Rendezvous and a boat participant Daniel Tipton found abandoned on a forest service road.

“It’s kind of terrifying to drive down the highway, but it is technically street legal,” Tipton told KUOW. “Rides like a boat.”

Sharman has been part of the group since 2022, “souping up” his 1991 Ford Ranger to get the job done.

“This truck has hauled boats, couches, cars, and hundreds (thousands?) of pounds of trash out of the woods,” Sharman wrote on his blog. “It’s thrown pushrods, gone swimming, done donuts, climbed mountains, and [ran] out of fuel, but it hasn’t left me stranded yet.”

Initially, the event just started as a DIY street-racing endeavor, but creator Morgan told KUOW it “had to change” once it gained popularity.

“If we’re gonna use public land,” Morgan said, “we changed the metric from competition [to] time, as a race would be, to see how much trash you could pick up off of public land.”

Now, hundreds gather at Gambletown annually, eager to “let their freak flag fly and build crazy weird cars,” Morgan said.

At the 2026 event, participants removed 13 abandoned cars, seven RVs, and four boats, along with about 600 tires and 250,000 pounds of trash from the national grassland.

It brings their lifetime total up to about 5 million pounds of garbage removed from public lands since the inception of the event, organizers told Central Oregon Daily News.

But the do-good element of Gambletown doesn’t end after one weekend. Morgan created an app called Sons of Smokey — a play on “Sons of Anarchy” and the beloved forest mascot Smokey the Bear — for public land-goers to mark large items of trash they see while out on hikes or camping trips.

Then, anyone can check in on the app to go haul out the trash.

This 12-year-long commitment to vigilante trash pickup is one Morgan hopes attracts a diverse coalition.

“I think we’ve also addressed a certain portion of our society and outdoor users who didn’t fit in the archetype of how people wanted to define environmentalists and stewardship, right?” he told KUOW. 

“There are people from all sides of the aisle, no matter what, that can agree that trash doesn’t belong out here.”

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Featured Image: Courtesy of Rowan Sharman