I have personally seen the sad demise of two favorite "junkyards". The first is where I got all of the parts for my 1946 Ford project back in 1970 - 74. I pulled lots of trim parts both inside and out, headliner bows, seat trim, several transmissions and a bunch of other stuff. That yard closed in the early 90's and a bunch of us showed up when the crushers arrived. It turned into a Hot Rodders Irish Wake with many guys with strong Hot Rod cred showing up.
The second yard I lost was when we lived in South Carolina and an old guy (Harold, out on St. Helena island) had had a salvage yard on one of the Sea Islands for decades. I had gotten a few Porsche parts from there and zipped out before he closed for parts for my second Speedster build (and a complete 924 rear suspension....for $50 bucks!) He had collected everything from old Packards, Caddys, Hudsons and a few Graham Paiges from the 20's through the 50's, to modern(ish) Camaros, Mustangs and Pickup trucks (he had a row of 8 el Caminos, too!), all neatly arranged in rows by make/model.
The same thing happened this time when the crushers, all four of them, arrived to crush what was conservatively estimated at 2,000 cars (final count was over 2,800) after he had sold whatever he could. Several local car clubs arrived that morning to sadly and quietly watch the crushers set up and begin their work, watching from lawn chairs and passing around Southern and Gullah food, Beer and Bloody Marys. Looking around, the spectators were a mixed lot of black and white, blue collar and white collar, military and civilian, all customers of Harold's impressive collection and all sad at the passing of an era, never to be re-lived.
It took most of a week to crush them all. Harold kept several old Hudson Commodores for himself to restore, more from nostalgia than anything else, he said. In the end, after hiring the crushers and all else, he netted around $1.2 Million in scrap metal, all of which went to China, and that money became his retirement, along with selling the salvage lot of about 15 acres, some of it along the water, to a developer who is just now beginning to build a gated community there after stripping and replacing the contaminated topsoil.
Always sad to see a good salvage yard close. Just one more lost opportunity to find parts.