Seven Magic Mountains

Ugo Rondinone's 30-foot stacks of dayglo boulders in the open desert

Seven Magic Mountains stands in flat open desert about 16 km south of Sloan Canyon, just off Interstate 15 — seven stacks of huge cubic boulders painted in saturated fluorescent colours, each tower more than ten metres tall. The installation by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone is a deliberate visual rupture: vivid Day-Glo against the long beige horizon of the Mojave, with the mountains of Sloan Canyon and the McCulloughs as backdrop.

It is the most-photographed art piece in southern Nevada and gets crowded at sunrise and sunset, when the colour is at its best. Parking is free, the walk in is short, and the site is open at all times. Combine it easily with a morning at the Sloan Canyon petroglyph trail.

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A story
Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone installed Seven Magic Mountains in 2016 as a temporary work — it was supposed to come down after two years. The Bureau of Land Management extended the permit several times after the installation became one of the most-photographed art works in the American West. The boulders are quarried local limestone, painted in fluorescent enamel that glows almost radioactively at sunrise and sunset.