Sun Tunnels: Where Utahns experience the summer solstice like no where else

One of artist Nancy Holt’s most recognizable “earthwork” art installations — The Sun Tunnels — sits in Utah’s Great Basin Desert.

Located 85 miles northeast of Wendover, back across the Utah border, past the Lucin ponds, on Little Pigeon Road, you will find the four concrete cylinders, each 18 feet long and 9 feet in diameter, arranged in an “X” pattern.

Holt constructed the artwork from 1973 to 1976, after three years of planning. Holt and her husband, Robert Smithson, were leaders in the land-art movement; Smithson created the Spiral Jetty, which is based near the Great Salt Lake.

The artwork’s tubes are aligned perfectly with the sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstice, acting as a large viewfinder for visitors. The work is designed, in Holt’s words, to “bring the vast space of the desert back to human scale.”

According to The Utah Museum of Fine Arts, each of the cylinders has holes in them to represent four different constellations: Draco, Perseus, Columbia and Capricorn.

The artwork can be accessed by the public whenever they want to make the trip.