Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty was built in Utah, on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake.
Constructed in April 1970, the enormous earthwork forms a coil extending into the lake. Smithson used basalt rock, mud, precipitated salt crystals, and earth, with construction help from heavy equipment operated near Rozel Point in Box Elder County. The site’s remote landscape is part of the artwork itself.
Spiral Jetty is a landmark of Land art, a movement that shifted artistic activity from galleries into large outdoor environments. Smithson also made a 32-minute color film documenting the project, so the work exists both as a physical site and as a record of its construction.
The sculpture’s appearance changes with the lake. Water levels have repeatedly submerged and exposed it; prolonged drought in Utah made it visible for extended periods beginning in the early 2000s. It is not in Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico, although all three states are associated with major landscapes and land-art traditions.