Once upon a landfill (literally), there was a nonprofit in Manzanita called CARTM—with a scrappy but charming vision that started as a recycling experiment perched at the edge of the world and somehow evolved into a weirdly perfect mix of salvage, imagination, and neighborly alchemy. It was an almost-mythical place people wandered into for a tool or trinket and accidentally found belonging. A place where people learned, fixed, tinkered, donated, created, and gathered. For decades, it stitched the area together in ways that only become obvious when something beloved teeters on the edge.
Fast-forward to now. CARTM has been through some twists (understatement), changed names, lost capacity, but—still scrappy—is fighting its way back into itself as Heart of Cartm.
But the truth is simpler than the legend. The magic of old CARTM was never just the dump or the trash or the punk-rock trashion shows (though we’re happy to continue hosting them each May). The magic was that it turned a place everyone had to go anyway into a civic commons. CARTM was that one locale in North County where people of every age, income, politics, and walks of life crossed paths, worked alongside each other, traded knowledge, swapped stories, and recognized themselves as part of the same community. The location mattered only because it created a social equalizer; the story that unfolded was the wonder of community itself.
When that disappeared in 2018, what the region lost wasn’t a quirky reuse site—it was a communal space where belonging, creativity, and resourcefulness were practiced in the open. A microcosm of rural life. One where a 75-year-old in a bubble-wrap gown, a high-school kid in duct tape armor, the local coffee shop owner, retirees dropping recycling, working families hauling junk, artists with repurposed treasures, and weekend visitors all existed side-by-side in the same story.
Heart of Cartm exists because that function mattered. And still does. We’re not trying to recreate the dump or cosplay nostalgia. We’re rebuilding what the dump made possible: the civic infrastructure that helps a rural community stay connected, resilient, and imaginative. A place where people learn practical skills, care for materials and each other, and find common ground despite everything that might divide them.
So what is Heart of Cartm now?
Today, HoC doesn’t live at the dump, and it doesn’t look like old CARTM—because the community needs something different now. What we are is the continuation of the part that mattered most: the commons.
Right now, Heart of Cartm is:
– a reuse store where materials find new life instead of going to waste
– a hands-on place to learn—to repair something, make something, figure something out
– a workshop space where people create, teach each other, and share practical skills
– a place to gather, whether you’re dropping off fabric, volunteering, or just wandering in
– a connector between neighbors, artists, teachers, makers, environmental groups, land trusts, schools, and local businesses
– a tiny nonprofit trying to hold onto (and rebuild) one of the few shared community spaces we have left
In other words, Heart of Cartm is the same kind of commons CARTM used to be—in a new form. People still come here to find something useful, learn something practical, bump into neighbors, swap stories, solve problems, and make things together. The magic didn’t disappear; it just moved from the dump to a storefront in Downtown Wheeler.
Our work now responds directly to rural realities of economic precarity, climate pressure, and the shrinking number of shared spaces where community can actually happen beyond our screens. What we’re rebuilding isn’t the past—it’s the capacity that made the past powerful. It’s the practical and cultural infrastructure that keeps an organization like ours connected.
And in a moment like this, when the work feels fragile and the stakes feel high, it helps to return to a truth steadier than any circumstance, expressed in Margaret Mead’s simple directive:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
It was true in CARTM’s early days.
It’s true now.
And Heart of Cartm is what happens when that commitment takes root again, rebuilt not through myth or memory, but through the people who still show up, care, create, and carry the story forward.
The hard part is this: we’re rebuilding quickly, and it’s working—but we’re doing it on an extremely lean budget. We’ve secured grants, rebuilt programs, and even have federal funding on the horizon, but we need to survive the next few months to reach that stability. If you believe in what Heart of Cartm is becoming again, this is the moment to help. Give what you can. Pass the word along if you can’t. The commons only works when the community carries it together.
www.heartofcartm.org/donate
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