Stonehenge replica

On the edge of a university campus in West Texas, limestone slabs were set in the pattern of Stonehenge, laid out so that the summer solstice sunrise runs along the line of the heel stone, according to the man who surveyed the site.

Texas Hill Country reported in 2017 that the idea began with Chris Stanley, then chairman of the University of Texas Permian Basin's Humanities and Fine Arts Department, who had long required his art students to build Stonehenge models. With a retired contractor who supported public art and a limestone quarry owner who offered to donate the stones, the three won university approval for a full-size version. The stones were raised in 2004. Surveyor Aaron Burrell, writing in American Surveyor in 2025, says the slabs came from a quarry near Garden City, that he calculated the solstice sunrise bearing for Odessa at about 61.9 degrees, and that a campus light pole was moved out of the sunrise line. Burrell describes a brass compass disc set at the centre and a bronze plaque at the entrance.