Last November, I briefly mentioned Michael Heizer's City, a massive earthworks project under construction in the remote desert of Nevada, three hours north of Las Vegas. He's been working on it since 1970 and does not expect it to be finished for several more years, when it will be opened to the public. Since I wrote that post, I've found some more interesting information about the project, including the most detailed satellite map I've seen, pictured above.

First, here's an excellent article from the New York Times Magazine about the project. Michael Kimmelman, art critic and the writer of that article, visited Heizer and his wife at his ranch near the sculpture, becoming one of they lucky few allowed on his vast tract of land, aside from his construction crew. He captures the beauty and remoteness of the area, describes Heizer's rancher's life far from any major population centers, and gives a sketch of the awesome structure taking shape. Heizer is a fascinating and ambitious character, more interested in how his work will be viewed in thousands of years than by his contemporaries.

I found that article on City's Wikipedia page, which led me to something even more interesting: the latitude and longitude of the project. I looked up the coordinates on Google maps, and was surprised to find the most detailed and recent satellite photo of the sculpture I've seen. Click on that link, and zooming into the northwest corner of the sculpture, you'll see the "45º, 90º, 180º" sculpture which was featured in this photo in the NYTM article:

The satellite photo also gives a clear indication of the scale of the project -- it looks to be a little over a mile long, and about 1000 feet wide, oriented SE-NW. The original section of the sculpture, the building in the southeast corner, is just a small part of the layout. You can see some interesting new features, such as a cross-shaped segment, and it's clear that when the photo was taken, there was active construction taking place right near the City center.

For those interested, I dug up which USGS quadrant City is located in, so that you can order your own $6 copy of its 7.5 Minute Quadrangle Map (1 inch = 2000 feet) from the USGS store. Its official number and name: 83545 - WATER GAP WEST, NV. I ordered the map, dated 1985, and even then the sculpture was clearly marked by the government's cartographers.

Since the location is known, it wouldn't be too hard for someone to get to the site with the help of Google maps to find the unmarked roads. But despite the coolness of it all, I wouldn't recommend using the coordinates to make an early visit to the site -- according to the NYTM article, "anyone trying to show up uninvited will be arrested for trespassing or shot at." Better wait until the public unveiling, whenever that happens.

Last month, vandals defaced a panel of rock art in a cave located in Red Rock Canyon just west of Las Vegas, bringing up a dilemma: there is ancient rock art all over southern Nevada (expertly indexed and photographed in detail here, and the source of the above photo) and people like me love to visit the sites, but if the locations of the rock art is made public it puts the art at great risk of vandalism. The current solution to this problem is to publicize only a few major locations (Red Rock Canyon, Valley of Fire, and to a lesser degree, Sloan Canyon, Keyhole Canyon, Grapevine Canyon -- all of which I've been to except for Sloan and Grapevine), leaving the more obscure sites for historians and locals in the know. This seems to be a rather pragmatic approach, but unfortunately, with the massive growth Nevada has been experiencing and will continue to experience, petroglyph sites are becoming more vulnerable than ever.

All of which makes me wonder if there is a better, more technological, solution to the rock art problem. I'd like to imagine an ideal world where someone has created a Google Map resource pinpointing every rock art location in the Southwest, and perhaps this already exists in an unpublicized academic setting. (If not, I'd like to offer my services to make one -- check out the Google Map tool I created to help Clark and Washoe county voters to find their nearest polling place.) But such a tool has the potential to be a vandal's paradise, as long as they have a high-clearance vehicle, a GPS device, and a spraycan.

So I'm putting this question out there: does anyone have any ideas as to how to protect a historic resource that is somewhat abundant, geographically decentralized, and vulnerable to sharp objects? The problem is made more difficult with the rock art being out in the open desert and in places without electricity and phone reception. Things like video cameras or sensor networks come to mind, but the environmental conditions are less than ideal. Human volunteers can do only a limited amount of surveillance. I'm stumped and am pessimistic about the future of rock art protection. Ideas?

Just as a side note, I plan to visit Sloan Canyon in the near future, once I have some time and access to a high-clearance vehicle. (Our Honda Civic isn't quite cut out for it.) I also regret missing the Great Gallery during my visit to Canyonlands National Park in 2005, where there are human-shaped pictographs up to twelve feet tall. These were featured in the beginning of Koyaanisqatsi, one of my favorite films. Utah isn't too far from me, so hopefully I'll make that trip soon.