There is a place in Utah’s Great Basin Desert where the sun rises inside a concrete tube — twice a year, on cue, exactly where an artist told it to fifty years ago.
No sign announces it. No visitor center, no gift shop, no fence. Just four enormous concrete tunnels lying on the desert floor near a ghost town called Lucin, arranged in an open X, waiting for the solstices. This is Sun Tunnels (1973–76), Nancy Holt’s masterpiece of Land art — and on Monday, December 21, 2026, it performs its winter show.
If you have ever wanted to watch the shortest day of the year arrive through a 22-ton telescope made of concrete, this is your plan-ahead notice. Nobody stumbles onto Sun Tunnels. You go on purpose, or you don’t go at all.
What you’re looking at
Four concrete cylinders, each 18 feet long, 9 feet across, and weighing about 22 tons, laid on a 40-acre plot of high desert that Holt bought in 1974. Two pairs, each pair sharing an axis, the whole arrangement forming a wide X you can read from the air.
The axes are the artwork. One pair is aligned to the points where the sun rises and sets at the summer solstice; the other pair takes the winter solstice. On the days around each solstice, stand at the mouth of the right tunnel at sunrise or sunset and the sun appears centered in the far circle of concrete — framed, held, and gone within minutes.
Holt said the idea came to her “while I was in the desert watching the sun rising and setting, keeping the time of the earth.” She wanted to bring “the vast space of the desert back to human scale” — a machine for noticing, built out of the heaviest, plainest material there is.
The sky, drilled into the roof
The alignments are only half the trick. Look up inside any of the tunnels and the roof is pierced with holes — dozens of them, in patterns. Each tunnel carries one constellation across its top: Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. The holes are drilled at 7, 8, 9, and 10 inches across, sized to the brightness of the stars they stand for.
All day long, sunlight pours through those holes and throws moving spots of light across the tunnel’s floor and walls — the constellations, walking slowly across the concrete as the earth turns. Holt called it bringing the sky down to the earth. On a bright afternoon you can stand inside a tunnel and watch the stars move. At night, moonlight does the same thing in silver.
December 21, 2026: the winter show
The winter solstice lands on Monday, December 21, 2026. The viewing isn’t at the solstice moment itself — it’s at sunrise and sunset through the winter pair of tunnels, when the sun rises and sets directly on the tunnels’ axis and centers itself in the tube.
Here’s the forgiving part: the sun’s rising and setting points barely move near the solstice, so the alignment holds for days. Experienced visitors say the sun sits more or less centered in the tubes for roughly ten days either side of the solstice — call it December 11–31, with December 18–24 the sweet spot. Miss the exact day and you have not missed the show.
That week, sunrise near Lucin comes around 7:56 AM and sunset around 5:11 PM Mountain time. Our honest advice for winter: take the sunset. A sunrise viewing means driving unlit dirt roads in the dark, in sub-freezing cold, for a 45-minute-from-help payoff. Sunset gets you the same sun in the same circle, and you drive the dirt in daylight.
There is no official solstice event — no organizer, no schedule, no tickets. What happens instead is a tradition: a small, quiet gathering of fellow pilgrims who camped nearby the night before and showed up to watch the light do its work. Go expecting reverence, not a festival.
The artist: Nancy Holt
Holt conceived Sun Tunnels in 1973 — the same year her husband, Robert Smithson, died in a plane crash while scouting his own land artwork in Texas. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), the great coil of basalt reaching into the Great Salt Lake, sits about 150 miles by road from Sun Tunnels. A Utah land-art pilgrimage that pairs the two is one of the great art road trips in America: his spiral in the salt water, her calendar in the desert.
Holt worked with a University of Utah astrophysicist on the solar measurements, bought the land, and spent three years placing four 22-ton tubes with surveyor’s precision in a place with no water, no power, and no audience. When the Dia Art Foundation acquired Sun Tunnels in March 2018, it became the first land artwork by a woman in Dia’s collection — where it remains, stewarded by Dia with the Holt/Smithson Foundation, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
The pilgrimage: how to actually go
This is the part the artwork demands of you. Sun Tunnels sits at 41.3036° N, 113.8639° W, about 4 miles southeast of the Lucin townsite in Box Elder County — roughly four hours from Salt Lake City and about an hour and a half from West Wendover. From Las Vegas it’s a full expedition — figure on seven-plus hours of driving — which puts most Nevadans in Wendover the night before, and that’s a fine way to do it.
Dia’s route: I-80 west to Oasis, Nevada (Exit 378), then NV-233 toward Montello — fuel up there, because Montello’s station is the last gas, roughly 45 minutes from the site. From there it’s back into Utah on UT-30, then graded gravel and dirt for the final stretch to Lucin and Little Pigeon Road.
Non-negotiables, from Dia and everyone who has made the trip:
- Dry roads only. Ordinary cars make it fine when it’s dry. When the dirt is wet, it turns to mud that can swallow a trip whole. Check the forecast and don’t gamble.
- There is nothing at the site. No bathrooms, no water, no food, no fuel, no shade. Carry a full tank, extra water, food, and serious warm layers.
- Your phone will give up before you arrive. Cell signal dies roughly 30 miles out. Download offline maps and Dia’s directions before you leave I-80 — and download UMFA’s free Sun Tunnels Self-Guide in the STQRY app while you’re at it.
- Free, open year-round, no permit. Dispersed camping is available on the surrounding BLM land; pack out everything. Dia’s rules: Leave No Trace, no drones, no fire pits, and don’t climb on or tamper with the artwork.
- Tell someone your plan. In December, the nearest help is 45 minutes away in good conditions.
Why this one matters
The desert West is full of art that asks something of you, but Sun Tunnels asks the most and gives the most: a calendar older than language, rebuilt in concrete, that still keeps perfect time. It works twice a year at full power and quietly every day in between, throwing constellations across its own floor for whoever bothered to come.
December 21 is coming. The tunnels will be there, the sun will be there, and the only variable is you.
Quick facts
- What: Sun Tunnels (1973–76) by Nancy Holt — four concrete tunnels aligned to the solstices
- Where: Near Lucin, Box Elder County, Utah · 41.3036° N, 113.8639° W
- Winter solstice: Monday, December 21, 2026 · best viewing window roughly Dec 11–31 (sweet spot Dec 18–24), at sunrise and sunset
- Cost: Free · open year-round · no permit
- Drive: ~4 hrs from Salt Lake City · ~1.5 hrs from West Wendover · last fuel in Montello, NV
- Bring: Full tank, water, food, warm layers, offline maps — and patience for dirt roads
- Rules: Leave No Trace · no drones · no fire pits · don’t climb the artwork
Photo: Retis, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Visiting details drawn from the Dia Art Foundation’s Sun Tunnels visitor guidance.
