A WWII vet spent 20 years building a desert monument from junk off I-80 in Nevada

He called it a tribute to America’s first people

Along Interstate 80 in northern Nevada, between Lovelock and Winnemucca, something rises from the flat desert that stops people mid-drive.

Concrete figures, scavenged metal, antique bottles, and hand-built towers spread across five acres of high desert scrub. Frank Van Zant built it all, mostly alone, mostly from trash, over two decades.

The story of how it got there, and why, is unlike anything else along this stretch of highway.

A survivor who ended up in the Nevada desert

Frank Van Zant was born Nov. 11, 1921, in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, a place with deep roots in Creek Nation history. He identified as Creek Indian his whole life.

He served in World War II with the Army’s Tank Corps, saw combat in Europe and came home badly burned.

After the war, he studied theology, worked law enforcement in Sutter County, California, and later worked as a private investigator. Around 1968, his truck broke down near Imlay, Nevada.

He never left.

From a broken-down trailer to a three-story tower

Van Zant took the name Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder and bought about five and a half acres near where his truck had quit on him. He started by covering his travel trailer with cement and stones.

Then he kept going. The trailer became a three-story structure.

He never bought lumber or steel. The only material he paid for was concrete.

Everything else, car windshields for windows, scrap iron and galvanized pipe for framing, chicken wire for sculpting forms, came from the desert and nearby junkyards.

More than 200 figures carved in concrete

Across the buildings and grounds, Van Zant sculpted more than 200 concrete figures. Many depict Native Americans and protective spirits.

Others honor specific people: Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Paiute writer and activist; Standing Bear, a Ponca chief once jailed for leaving Indian territory; and Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec deity.

Some figures are self-portraits of Van Zant in different poses and moods. One tribute stands for his son Sid, who died at 19.

Each sculpture has a story behind it, and you can walk among them in any order.

Car hoods, dolls’ heads, and a wall of antique bottles

The building materials here read like an inventory of things people threw away.

Car hoods, typewriters, gas pumps, railroad ties, dolls’ heads and antique bottles all ended up in the walls and surfaces of the monument.

On the third floor of the main structure, a solid wall of antique bottles lets the desert light pass through like a stained glass window.

At the very top of the building, Van Zant carved an arch, designed as a handle so the Great Spirit could lift the whole structure away after his death.

The commune that drew seekers to the Imlay desert

Through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Thunder Mountain pulled in spiritual seekers, artists and travelers passing through Nevada. At its peak, as many as 40 people lived on the grounds at once.

Van Zant ran a three-story hostel to house visitors, and his helpers combed the surrounding desert to keep the building going. The monument eventually held about seven structures total, including an underground house.

Van Zant called the place a museum and a monument to the American Indian.

A fire in 1983 ended the commune years

In 1983, a suspected arson fire tore through the compound and destroyed the hostel along with years of work. Most of the people living there drifted away after that, and Van Zant never rebuilt what the fire took.

That same year, the state of Nevada gave him its first Governor’s Arts Award in the Folk Arts category, a strange pairing of recognition and loss arriving at the same time.

The site went quieter after 1983, and it never recovered its earlier energy.

Van Zant’s last years and what he left behind

By the late 1980s, Van Zant’s wife and children had gone. His health had been sliding for years.

He wrote a farewell letter leaving the property to his son Dan. He died Jan. 5, 1989.

After that, the site sat without care for years. Vandals got into it, and the desert weather did its own damage.

What had taken two decades to build began to deteriorate in ways that were hard to reverse. The sculptures stayed, but the grounds wore the neglect.

How Thunder Mountain earned its place in history

In 1992, Thunder Mountain Monument went onto the Nevada State Register of Historic Places, giving it official recognition that Van Zant never sought while he was alive.

Around 2002, his son Dan took ownership and started cleaning the site, hauling away tons of material his father had stored for future construction. The restoration runs entirely on visitor donations.

Dan has talked about building a future visitor center and putting in an irrigation system to bring the grounds back. For now, the work continues slowly.

Walk the grounds yourself on a self-guided tour

The site is open during daylight hours at no charge, and you walk it on your own.

You cannot go inside the main residence, but the exterior, all the sculptures, the remaining structures, and the open grounds, is yours to explore.

Dan Van Zant wrote the information panels himself, so what you read on the signs comes directly from someone who grew up there. A donation box sits at the entrance.

There is no gift shop, no staff, no admission desk. Just the monument and the desert around it.

How the Smithsonian and film crews found this Nevada site

Art historians classify Thunder Mountain as a visionary art environment, a place where personal belief, architecture and sculpture collapse into a single expression.

The Smithsonian has documented it, and two short documentary films have covered Van Zant’s story. What makes it land differently in person than in a photo is the scale.

Five acres of hand-built concrete figures, assembled one piece at a time over 20 years by a man working from conviction rather than a plan, tells you something that no film quite captures.

What to know before you make the drive out

The monument sits at 800 East Star Peak Road in Imlay, Nevada. From I-80, take exit 145 at Imlay, head east, then turn left onto Star Peak Road.

The monument comes up on your left as the road turns to gravel. Services near Imlay are limited, so bring water and whatever you need before you leave the highway.

The site has no lighting, so go during the day. Walk carefully because some of the materials are old and fragile.

The site’s own position is simple: you enter at your own risk.

Hit the water at Rye Patch State Recreation Area

If you want to stretch the trip into a full day out, Rye Patch State Recreation Area sits about 22 miles northeast of Lovelock off I-80.

The park wraps around an 11,000-acre reservoir on the Humboldt River with 72 miles of shoreline.

You can fish for walleye, catfish, white bass, black bass and crappie, or bring a boat and spend the afternoon on the water. Two campgrounds have a total of 50 sites, and the park stays open year-round.

The area also has ties to prehistoric Lake Lahontan, and fossils of ancient camels and horses have turned up nearby.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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