Robert Smithson’s time machine
For me, at the moment, one of the great disappointments of Google Earth is its unreadiness to focus on Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” on the briny shore of Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah. Not only would it be a pile of fun zipping around over it like a bird, you could keep an eye on how it’s doing from time to time. As you can see below, the satellite was obviously having a fuzzy day.
This is easily the most famous of the many earth-moving efforts of Smithson (1938-1973), who came out of industry-minded Passaic, New Jersey, and obviously wanted to sculpt a better world. He fashioned “Spiral Jetty” over the course of six days in April 1970 out of basalt rocks and earth, a counterclockwise coiled dragon 1,500 feet long and 15 wide. See the rest.
