Most people think about time in minutes, hours, or maybe fiscal quarters. Danny Hillis thinks about it in millennia. Back in the eighties, he started obsessing over the fact that our culture has a short attention span, basically a "pathological" focus on the right now. He wanted to build something to slow us down. He wanted a monument to "long-term thinking." That’s where the Clock of the Long Now comes in. But if you’re trying to find the 10000 year clock location, don't expect a roadside attraction with a gift shop. It’s way more complicated than that.
It's out there. Somewhere.
The actual site is tucked away in the Sierra Diablo mountain range of West Texas. It's on land owned by Jeff Bezos, who has pumped at least $42 million into this thing. You can't just put a 500-foot tall mechanical clock in a suburban backyard or a museum. It needs stability. It needs silence. It needs a place that won't be paved over by a Starbucks in the next century.
The Brutal Geography of the 10000 Year Clock Location
If you look at a map of West Texas, you'll see a lot of nothing. That's intentional. The 10000 year clock location was chosen because the limestone mountain provides a natural shield against the elements. We're talking about a massive vertical shaft bored into a mountain near Van Horn. This isn't just a hole in the ground; it’s a high-tech tomb for a machine made of stainless steel, titanium, and dry-running ceramic bearings.
Van Horn is a dusty town. You've probably heard of it lately because of Blue Origin, Bezos's space company. The launch site is nearby. It’s a strange juxtaposition—one project designed to hurl humans off the planet at incredible speeds, and another designed to sit perfectly still for a hundred centuries.
Getting to the mountain is a nightmare. Honestly, that’s by design. The Long Now Foundation, the group behind the project, wants the journey to be a pilgrimage. You have to hike. You have to climb. You have to sweat. The elevation at the site is roughly 1,500 feet above the valley floor. To reach the clock, you'll eventually have to ascend a winding staircase cut directly into the rock.
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Why a Mountain in Texas?
Why not the Himalayas? Or the Alps? Or a vault in Switzerland?
Stability is king. The Sierra Diablo range is geologically "quiet." You don't want an earthquake snapping your 10,000-pound pendulum in half in the year 4026. Also, the desert is dry. Moisture is the enemy of metal. Even with high-grade alloys, rust is a persistent jerk. By burying the clock deep inside a limestone mountain in a high-altitude desert, the engineers at Applied Invention (the firm building it) are leveraging the earth's natural thermal mass to keep temperatures consistent.
The clock is powered by the sun. Well, technically it's powered by the difference in temperature between the day and night. There’s a glass window at the top of the mountain shaft that lets in sunlight. This thermal energy drives a massive metal expansion device that winds the clock. It's a clever way to ensure the thing keeps ticking even if humans forget it exists for a few hundred years.
The Design Is Ridiculous (In a Good Way)
Danny Hillis didn't want a digital clock. Digital is fragile. Software rots. Hardware becomes obsolete. Instead, he went full mechanical. The "computer" inside the mountain is a series of massive bronze gears and Geneva wheels.
It's slow.
The "second" hand doesn't tick every second. The "century" wheel only moves once every hundred years. There's a cuckoo that comes out every millennium. Just imagine that. A mechanical bird that only sees the light of day ten times over the life of the machine.
The chime system is even crazier. Brian Eno, the legendary musician and Long Now board member, designed a chime generator that can produce a different sequence of bells every single day for 10,000 years. It’s a mathematical permutation that ensures no visitor will ever hear the same melody twice.
The Logistics of Building in the Middle of Nowhere
Building at the 10000 year clock location has been a logistical Herculean task. They had to use a specialized "raise bore" machine to drill the main shaft. This isn't like drilling a well. It’s a 500-foot deep, 12-foot wide vertical tunnel through solid rock.
- The components are massive. We are talking about gears that weigh hundreds of pounds.
- The mountain is remote. There are no paved roads to the summit.
- Everything has to be hauled up.
- The precision required is insane. The bearings are made of ceramic because traditional oil would gum up or evaporate over centuries.
Think about the sheer hubris and beauty of that. We can barely get a smartphone to last three years without the battery dying, yet here are people obsessing over how a ceramic ball bearing will perform in the year 8500. It’s a project that mocks our current "move fast and break things" culture.
How to Actually Visit (The Hard Truth)
I get asked this a lot: "Can I go see it right now?"
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: It’s still under construction. While the main shaft is done and many of the components are being installed, the 10000 year clock location is not open to the public yet. When it eventually opens, it won't be a theme park. The Long Now Foundation has stayed pretty quiet about the exact capacity, but they've hinted that it will be a limited, rugged experience. You’ll likely have to apply for a slot, drive to Van Horn, and then hike for a full day just to reach the entrance.
There's actually a prototype of the clock in the Science Museum in London. If you want to see the "proof of concept" without trekking through the Texas brush, that’s your best bet. It’s a smaller version, but it shows the same mechanical logic.
The Controversy of the Billionaire Watch
It’s impossible to talk about the 10000 year clock location without talking about Jeff Bezos. Some people hate it. They see it as a vanity project for the world's richest man—a "billionaire's watch" buried in a mountain while the world burns.
There’s a valid argument there. $42 million could do a lot of immediate good.
But the counter-argument is that we need symbols. Humans have always built massive, "useless" things to help us understand our place in time. The Pyramids. Stonehenge. The Great Wall. These weren't "efficient" uses of resources at the time, but they shaped how civilizations viewed themselves. The Clock of the Long Now is a physical manifestation of an idea: that we have a responsibility to the future. If we start thinking in 10,000-year increments, maybe we’ll stop making short-sighted decisions about the environment, technology, and war.
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Engineering for the Deep Future
The engineering challenges at the West Texas site are unlike anything else in modern construction. Most buildings are designed for a 50-year lifespan. Maybe 100. This is 100 times that.
One of the coolest features is the "Solar Annunciator." At solar noon every day, a lens at the top of the shaft focuses sunlight onto a specific part of the mechanism. This provides a "sync" signal. Even if the mechanical timing drifts a bit over a century, the sun recalibrates it. It uses the rotation of the Earth as its master clock.
The materials chosen are equally fascinating:
- Marine-grade Stainless Steel: For the primary structure to resist any trace moisture.
- Titanium: Used in critical moving parts for its strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance.
- Stone: Specifically the mountain itself, which acts as the ultimate housing.
The project is a collaboration between some of the smartest minds on the planet. You’ve got Danny Hillis (who pioneered parallel computing), Stewart Brand (the Whole Earth Catalog guy), and Kevin Kelly (founding editor of Wired). These aren't just "tech bros." They are thinkers who are genuinely worried about the "digital dark age." They worry that because we store everything on fragile hard drives and cloud servers, the people of the year 5000 will have no record of us. The clock is a physical record.
Actionable Steps for the Long-Term Curious
If you’re fascinated by the 10000 year clock location and want to engage with the project, don't just wait for a tour that might be years away. You can start "thinking long" right now.
Join the Long Now Foundation. They aren't just building a clock. They host seminars on long-term thinking, document vanishing languages (The Rosetta Project), and discuss "de-extinction" of species. Membership helps fund the ongoing construction and gives you access to an incredible library of talks.
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Visit the Prototype. If you find yourself in London, go to the Science Museum. Seeing the metal gears move in person makes the scale of the Texas project much easier to wrap your head around. It’s one thing to read about "Geneva wheels" and another to see a three-hundred-pound one rotate.
Explore the Van Horn area. While you can't get into the clock site yet, the surrounding region is stunning. Guadalupe Mountains National Park is nearby. It gives you a sense of the ruggedness and isolation of the Sierra Diablo range. It puts the "mountain" part of the clock's location into perspective.
Read 'The Clock of the Long Now' by Stewart Brand. This book is the "bible" for the project. It explains the philosophy behind why we need a 10,000-year clock in the first place. It covers the "six layers" of civilization—fashion, commerce, infrastructure, governance, culture, and nature—and how they move at different speeds.
Ultimately, the 10000 year clock location is more than just a GPS coordinate in West Texas. It's a challenge. It's asking us if we're capable of being "good ancestors." It’s a giant, ticking reminder that our current moment is just a tiny blink in the eyes of history. Whether it finishes next year or in five years, the mountain is already waiting.