The sky was cloudy in Odessa just after the break of dawn on June 21, 2004. It was the first summer solstice since a group of community members constructed a replica of Stonehenge, the 5,000-year-old monument in Wiltshire, England. The town had been watching the installation of the new public artwork every day, in anticipation of this moment. Would the cosmos prove the structure’s position was astronomically accurate? That is, would it align with the path of the sun as it rises east on the longest day of the year, just as the original monument had for centuries?
Unfortunately, the overcast sky was offering little clarity.
Then, slowly, as about 50 locals waited at the site—a grassy lot facing Odessa’s only Home Depot and sitting next door to the University of Texas Permian Basin’s Charles A. Sorber Visual Arts Studios—the sun rose into its position over the Heel Stone, breaking through the clouds just enough to send its first rays into the center of the monument. The crowd burst into cheers.
“I think it changed the way our community saw art,” says UT Permian Basin art professor Chris Stanley, who helped build the monument.
The Stonehenge replica was constructed in just six weeks under the guidance of Stanley and retired businessman Dick Gillham. The two were not the first to create a Stonehenge replica in Texas. That claim to fame would go to “Stonehenge II,” located outside the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram and built in 1991. But Stanley and Gillham did construct the state’s only monument accurately oriented around the sunrise, the proof of which can be seen every year on the summer and winter solstices (June 20 and Dec. 21 in 2025).
Depending on who you ask, people might find it odd or charming that there are two replicas of Stonehenge in the Lone Star State. But Texans are not alone—dozens of these monuments exist across the country, some made of cars, canoes, or ceramic vases. This includes a replica in Montana built in 2001 using materials supplied by TexaStone Quarries, a fabricator and quarry operator headquartered in Garden City—just an hour outside of Odessa.
In fact, it was the quarry’s then-owner, Connie Edwards, who enabled the UT Permian Basin Stonehenge project to get off the ground. After completing the Montana project, he realized something similar could be done in Odessa if he donated the stones. He asked Stanley and Gillham what they’d do with 53 tractor-trailer loads of limestone, and the pair, knowing about Edwards’ previous work and sharing a fascination with Neolithic art, didn’t miss a beat: “We’d build Stonehenge.”
“From there, the adventure began,” Stanley says.
Stanley and Gillham selected the site at UT Permian Basin to encourage education and attract visitors to campus—it helped that there was already open space available outside of The University’s art studio where Stanley taught. Once they received UT System approval for the project, Stanley and Gillham brought on land surveyor Aaron Burrell to ensure that their copy not only mirrored the appearance of the original Stonehenge but also served the same suspected purpose: to function as an astronomical calendar that tracks the summer and winter solstices.
This was no easy task—Burrell had to take the original alignment of England’s Stonehenge and reorient it around the longitude and latitude coordinates of the replica’s center point. That way, the stones would line up with the angle of the solstice sunrises in Odessa, not Wiltshire. Without enough money to send Burrell to survey the original Stonehenge, he instead used screenshots from Google Earth to determine the measurements for the replica.
“I don’t know how to compare it to anything else I’ve ever done,” Burrell says.
The project was supported by in-kind donations from the community that assisted the process of transporting the materials. Gillham used his connections from three decades in the crane business to gather a group that had the skills and machinery needed to place the 40,000-pound stones in their formation. Most of the construction crew was made up of volunteers who worked weekends, contributing time and money to see the project through to completion.
The result was a structure that measured 100 feet across and 19 feet tall—an exact match in diameter and only slightly shorter compared to the original Stonehenge. The attraction now draws tourists off Interstate 20 and onto UT Permian Basin campus daily. It’s a common backdrop in photos taken by prom groups, seniors in caps and gowns, wedding parties, and local sports teams.
“You can go by there most any time and see people,” Gillham says.
Over the years, the replica has turned into more than a tourist attraction—it’s become a fixture that serves other purposes in Odessa’s community. As Stanley says, “Public art is not necessarily about lifting a person up—it’s lifting a whole bunch of people up and giving a bunch of people the chance to participate.”
Local students take field trips to learn about the monument’s history. Stanley incorporates it into his UT Permian Basin art appreciation and sculpture classes. Kids tire themselves out from climbing on the rocks.
In a town known for oil fields and prairie dogs, for being the home of the high school football team that inspired Friday Night Lights —a community that, as Stanley puts it, “had never really been known for public art”—Stonehenge became a place that brought people together.
