In the arid wilderness of Nevada, 5,160 miles away from the original Stonehenge, you will find a modern stone calendar on the Williams Ranch.  In 2006, Ryan Williams began spending evenings at the Ranch and became interested in the stars.  Once away from the city lights, he was amazed how bright and countless the stars are.

Curious as to why the north star was the only star in the sky that never moved, he began to learn more by spending his free time at the ranch studying the sun and stars.  Over the years, he tracked the earth’s movement around the sun by putting a stake in the ground where the sun’s shadow disappeared at sunset.

In 2008, Ryan and his dad, Ron placed the 40′ pole (gnomon) that you see in the middle of Ryanhenge now.  Before they permanently placed the pole, they had been marking the shadows from that spot for a couple of years.  After the pole was set, they continued to mark the shadow and tried to figure out the best way to build a solar calendar on that spot.

Ryan asked Mike Boone (master of concrete) to be the builder of the structure, designed by a civil engineer to survive for more than 1000 years.  The structure is built with concrete and reinforced with rebar.  The circular floor was placed in 2014 and has a diameter of 120 ft.  Mike started forming the vertical columns in the fall of 2017.  Each of the columns are 2 ft thick, 13 ft tall and have a 2 ft lintel at the top (a lintel is the horizontal concrete support across the top of the vertical columns), giving the structure a total height of 15 ft.  The column widths are the only dimensions that vary.  The standard width is 4 ft at the bottom and 3 ft 6 inches at the top.  The standard distance between these columns is approximately 3 feet.