Half a mile from the South Side’s Donkey Lady Bridge, a giant melange of steel and discarded materials looms over the Medina River. At its summit, a banner flaps in the wind with a message of defiance: “Don’t tread on me.”
The 50-foot-tall structure is composed of the decommissioned detritus of modern industry. Telephone poles, sheet metal, vent piping, box lids, railroad rails, Wal-Mart staircases, hospital walk-in freezers and more have been cobbled together into a behemoth of junk.
The structure occupies a liminal space, not just between art and junk but legality and illegality. It all depends on who you ask. According to the City of San Antonio, it’s a violation.
The junk tower is the creation of retired attorney-turned-outsider artist Phil Ross, who’s been working on his metallic magnum opus for decades. A junk-art fence also surrounds the property, which also houses 150 steel doors along with limousines, fire trucks, pickup trucks, construction equipment, a school bus and several sailboats.
For years, Ross lived a life of rugged individualism. But now the city has come to him, banging the gavel of code compliance.
“I chose to live out in the county rather than the city 30 years ago,” Ross said.
Ross, 75, originally purchased his 30 acres of non-contiguous riverfront property in the 1980s, before it was annexed into San Antonio city limits. Ross had been riding his motorcycle through the countryside when he spotted the land that would become his destiny.
At that time, the property was still under the jurisdiction of Bexar County rather than the city, and the county has no zoning laws. But when San Antonio annexed the land, a cold war began.
In 1989, the city condemned the property in what Ross argues was an attempt to acquire it for the Applewhite Reservoir. As a result, he wasn’t able to access his land for five years.
During that time, the University of California at Berkeley and St. Mary’s School of Law alum devoted his legal acumen to fighting the reservoir project, which he argued was a bad deal not just for him personally but the surrounding ecology.
Ultimately, San Antonio residents voted to kill the project, and Ross played a part. He and other community members collected more than 86,000 signatures to force a voter initiative.
Ross sued for damages over not being able to access his property and, with the settlement, began construction of his artistic vision.
“Living in a junk-art museum was my idea of a dream home,” Ross said.
It was seven stories tall, with unsecured wire mesh display racks and loose boards as flooring.
For a while, Ross lived in the makeshift structure — if the word “in” can even be applied to the assemblage of right angles that loosely resemble a building. During that time, he enjoyed an existence he describes as somewhere between outdoor camping and domesticity.
A licensed plumber, Ross was able to run pipes through the structure and connect to the water meter, bringing it running water and a primitive outdoor shower. Connecting to a power line brought refrigeration and bird watching from his junk-art hot tub.
But in 2010, a blaze started by an out-of-control fire pit destroyed everything that made the structure somewhat habitable. The accident left just the steel frame and other singed-but-sturdy components.
That’s when the city ordered Ross to remove two stories from the structure, reducing its height to 50 feet. He complied, and the city mostly left him alone for 15 years — that is, until he found himself the target of a flurry of code-enforcement notices over the past couple months.
In January, the city delivered a search warrant and gave Ross 10 days to remove the entire structure, but the eccentric multi-millionaire ignored the directive and went to Costa Rica “to get all [his] teeth removed.” When he returned in early March, he was issued with two more code violation notices and a stop-work order.
The City of San Antonio’s Code Enforcement Department confirmed the notices of the alleged violations.
Ross doesn’t intend to comply. Indeed, he’s doubled down, embellishing the summit of the structure with bicycles, microwave transmitter cones from CPS cell towers and a dummy from a Buc-ee’s travel stop outfitted with crutches. A hand-painted “Don’t tread on me” banner spells out his defiance — in case his intentions weren’t clear enough.
Ross originally wanted the banner to say “Come and take it” and feature a cannon in homage to the one flown during the Texas Revolution. However, his domestic partner Jo Ann Rivera, owner of the Black Swan Inn, advised him the message was too incendiary.
“I didn’t want them to think I was stupid enough to defend it with force,” Ross explained.
Besides, he has other things in his arsenal.
See you in court
“Where we’re going is a point of no return, until after probably years of litigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars in city-paid attorneys’ fees,” said Ross, who’s either the defendant or plaintiff in roughly a half-dozen court cases. “In the end, I will win.”
Ross is currently a defendant and counter-claimant in a defamation case over a Netflix docuseries. A segment of the series, titled Dirty Money, featured Ross’ involvement in a guardianship battle over San Antonio millionaire Charlie Thrash.
The high-profile case threatened to result in Ross’ disbarment, prompting him to retire from his nearly 35-year legal career.
Ross is also a defendant and counter-claimant in a trust case and a statutory condemnation case by the Texas Department of Transportation. He’s also a plaintiff in an inverse condemnation case against the City of San Antonio, a breach of contract case, and a negligent nuisance case, all involving other projects and properties.
At this point, the city’s multiple complaints against Ross’ structure, property and exterior fence include accusations of “illegal dumping” — something he denies. Code Compliance also maintains the steel tower puts the public at risk.
But considering Ross’ property is surrounded by nearly unfettered wilderness adjacent to the El Camino Real trailhead, it begs the question: what public? He also built a security fence around the structure, which means only those who break into the property would be at risk.
While Code Compliance has also deemed the property a “nuisance,” Ross only has two neighbors within two miles of his house, and both tolerate the project.
“It’s something different. It doesn’t bother me,” said Jose Valencia, whose property is across the street from Ross’. “Everyone can do what they want on their property. Freedom of speech, right?”
Over the years, Valencia has even provided Ross with leftover materials from his construction business.
The other neighbor, Laura Molina, who runs an air conditioning business with her husband Jeff, has a slightly different take.
“His fence does not bother me as long as he maintains it,” Molina said, adding that the fence is dilapidated and some of the trees hanging over it need to be trimmed.
Sometimes, people dump sofas, mattresses and trash bags outside Ross’ property thinking it’s a junk yard, Molina said. For his part, Ross said that those aren’t dumped garbage but items people donate for his art project.
Molina argues the motivation behind Ross’ junk-art fence isn’t artistic but a calculated effort to keep the city from messing with him by using the protections of the First Amendment — something Ross doesn’t deny.
Junk or art
Among the many enduring debates over Ross’ junk-art haven is whether it’s in the city or the country.
Ross and his neighbors said the city doesn’t dispatch employees to the area unless they’re maintaining the walking trail or serving Ross with code violations. The few residents aren’t connected to the city’s sewer system and have to rely on septic tanks.
Further, Valencia and Ross said it takes police and first responders up to an hour to respond to an emergency in the area. The nearest police substation is located downtown, some 45 minutes away.
Ross added that when he’s experienced break-ins, he’s conducted citizen’s arrests, sometimes with shotgun in hand, and waited for police to arrive.
Though Ross’ junk tower looks unfinished, Ross says it’s complete enough for him to enjoy. He frequently sits in a dingy recliner on the furthest outcropping over the river to drink beer and enjoy the vista.
From his “high chair” on the second story, Ross has a 360-degree view of the mesquites, chinaberry, elms and hackberry surrounding his property, where wild boar, coyotes, deer and goats roam free. A zipline also runs from the summit of the structure, and another runs from one part of the Medina River to another.
“It’s like an adult jungle gym,” he said.
Ross’ mother told him he would never finish the structure in her lifetime. But he said the art project is about the journey, not the destination.
The project has been a crash course in architecture, welding and construction, the retired attorney said.
Along the way, he’s had to learn how to operate a crane and back-hoe, both of which he won at auction. He also obtained a commercial driver’s license so he could use a dump truck to transport large items to his property.
While Ross understands that some people object to his junk-art structure, he said it represents an ongoing intellectual pursuit as he enjoys his retirement.
“Things have worked out pretty much how I’ve planned, except I didn’t anticipate fighting with the government,” Ross said.
However, he admits the legal disputes are also keeping him sharp.
Ross said he collected most of the junk for his wall on the side of the road. But don’t dare call it “trash.”
“Some artists use trash but I limit my use to junk,” Ross said, delineating between the two. “Junk is normally manufactured products that have lived beyond their shelf life but have a form.”
And while some artists incorporate plastic into their creations to divert it from the landfill, “trash is around in so much volume that it doesn’t make sense to keep it around as raw materials,” Ross added.
Like other outsider artist installations such as the Orange Show in Houston or Austin’s Cathedral of Junk, the project stems from an obsession many won’t understand. However, Ross said his is more about personal enjoyment than it is making a public statement.
Ross is also untrained as an artist. But being unqualified is a key qualification for outsider art, which is created outside any school or discipline.
Even so, Ross is a self-professed scholar when it comes to architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who he said inspired much of his design for the tower. The retired lawyer also sees himself as part of a lineage of junk art dating back to post-war Europe with the Italian Arte Povera movement, which incorporated discarded materials as a rejection of consumerism and conformity.
Ross has dedicated decades to this project, and he’s not going to give it up without a fight, he said, standing on the highest summit of his creation behind the “Don’t tread on me” flag.
“This is my seminal statement,” he said. “If they step on me — which they are — I’ll litigate.”
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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.
