I'm glad someone mentioned Highway 395, that super-scenic inland route that takes you past the Eastern Sierra (with Mount Whitney up close and personal), the Alabama Hills, site of many movies, Western and otherwise (Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunga Din), and the Manzanar Internment Camp, well worth a visit. Many native Californians don't even know about this road.

I believe the two-tone-green car with snow on its roof is a 1941 Studebaker Champion.

Still there as noted and waiting for y'all to come visit your dreams!

Thank you so much, dennis lorton, for identifying this place and encouraging me to visit. My fantasy has now shifted to Yosemite, Death Valley, and San Francisco, with Tom’s Place as the pretext and focus. I live in Montreal, on a long diagonal across the continent from this place, and there’s a plague underway with a closed border, but I do hope to make it one day. A Shorpy-inspired vacation destination! I’m sure others have done it.

Very Attractive two-tone finish on the 1942 Commander Custom Cruising Sedan.
Great photo!

That Mercury is a budding hot rod. The primer is where the trunk handle, Mercury badge and license plate holder have been removed, the back half of being "nosed & decked". Can't tell if the hood ornament has also been removed, i.e. "nosed". The plate on the bumper is a little crude. Full chrome hubcaps in the rear and flipper style hubcaps on the front are stylin'!

It is still there, 99% unchanged. I've been going there for 65 years, like my grandparents did in the 1920s. It's in Mono County off U.S. 395, about 30 miles north of Bishop. The walls are covered in old photos, old fishing and hunting gear, etc. There's a store, bar and cafe, and cabins for rent on the property. Or several campgrounds in Rock Creek, a mile up the road. J.D. Taylor, make the trip.

Great photo. Reminds me of the jigsaw puzzle I'm working on.

What's not to love about the green sedan in the foreground - split rear window, suicide doors, skinny bias-ply tires, running boards wide enough to hold a dance party on, just enough chrome, minimalistic rear lighting, and a hint of body corrosion. Could have been a concept vehicle for a 4-door Beetle limo!

Like many Shorpy fantasizers, I want to enter the photos of days gone by. But none so much as this one. I can hear the drip of the icicles, feel the crunch of the snow underfoot, smell the wood smoke and the crisp winter air. All I want now is to be able to go into that café and see what’s on the menu and be served a delicious 1950 meal while I take in the glorious view from those huge windows. This is a few years before I was born (1958), but that’s part of the fantasy, too: to enter the world of my parents when they were young and I was not yet born. I really want to put my hand on that brass doorknob and open that tall beautiful wooden door.

... where he plugged the guy who was in the trunk, and since then he’s repaired the bullet holes.

I'm floored this is a photo. It looks like a really good advertising illustration from the same era.