A ceramic tower 27 metres tall rises from the floor of the Great Salt Lake Desert about 25 miles east of Wendover, visible from Interstate 80 long before you reach it. Created by Swedish artist Karl Momen and completed in 1986, the sculpture consists of six spheres encrusted with colourful mosaic representing the diversity of life, mounted on a trunk of local stone. The state of Utah owns it now and maintains it.
The pull-off is on the northbound side. Most people stop for ten minutes, take photographs, and drive on bewildered. Momen said he wanted to bring life and colour to a landscape that overwhelms with its emptiness. Whether he succeeded is entirely personal. The setting — flat white salt in every direction, mountains far away, a single impossibly bright object in the middle of it — is undeniably arresting. It appears in countless road trip photographs and has a devoted following of people who seek it out specifically.