Thunder Mountain Monument
Nevada
Roadside Nevada hides one of the country's strangest and most moving folk-art sites. In nineteen sixty-nine, a World War Two veteran named Frank Van Zant pulled off Interstate Eighty at Imlay, Nevada, renamed himself Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder, and started building. Over two decades he assembled a compound of more than two hundred concrete sculptures from found objects: bottles, animal bones, auto parts, railroad ties, and scrap metal, all pressed into a tribute to the Native American experience and the injustices done to indigenous peoples.
The State of Nevada named him Artist of the Year in nineteen eighty-three, the same year an arsonist damaged part of the site. Van Zant died in nineteen eighty-nine. The monument sat neglected until nineteen ninety-two, when Nevada declared it a state historic site.
His family now helps maintain it, and it is partially open for self-guided tours.
