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

Cylinders align with the sunrise and sunset on the winter and summer solstices.

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

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The sunrise, lines up with Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, in Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The sunset is framed by Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, in Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Monday, June 17, 2024.

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.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The sunrise, lines up with Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, in Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.

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.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The sky glows before sunrise, framed by Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, in Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.

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.”

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels include holes representing the Draco, Perseus, Columbia and Capricorn constellations, in Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.

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.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Light reflects inside the famed Sun Tunnels sculpture, during a unique winter solstice in remote Utah's Great Basin Desert, on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020.

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