After 50 years of work, Michael Heizer's desert city opens in Nevada

City is a monumental sculpture developed and built in Central Eastern Nevada by Michael Heizer, from 1970 until today. A mile and a half long and a half mile wide, the City is a vast complex of shaped mounds and depressions, composed of basic materials – like compacted dirt, rock, and concrete. Its aesthetic deliberately recalls many ancient ceremonial buildings, but at the same time it appears futuristic.

The City is located in a remote valley, within the high desert of the Great Basin, surrounded by primitive wilderness and near the White River Narrows. The building materials were collected in the least invasive way possible, to ensure that native plants and wildlife could continue to live undisturbed. In June of 2015, the City and the area surrounding it – 704,000 acres in total – were proclaimed Basin and Range National Monument to safeguard the area’s unique environment. City has been created on private property in rural terrain, within the ancestral territories of the Nuwu (Southern Paiute) and Newe (Western Shoshoni), who lived in and around the vicinity and call this land home, as their ancestors did before them.

The construction of the City has been aided over the last fifty years by organizational and financial support from institutions and private individuals. City has begun to receive visitors on September 2, only for short day-trips, a maximum of six visitors and in case of favorable weather.