A star in a circle in Nevada

 kw: photo essays, investigations, maps, satellite photographs

It is interesting to peruse odd things people post about what they've seen on Google Maps or Google Earth. Recently I saw a few items that include these coordinates: 37°24'05.7"N, 116°52'06.1"W, which are easier to enter into GEarth (which I used) or GMaps as 37.40158, -116.86781. When you do, this appears:

Note, the accuracy of the coordinates with degrees-minutes-seconds, in tenths of a second, is just over 3 meters or 10 feet. The accuracy of coordinates with decimal degrees, reported to five digits after the decimal point, is 1.1 meters or 3.6 feet. I converted the one to the other, and the fifth decimal is effectively a guard digit, having excess precision.

What is this circle-star figure in the Nevada desert? Spoiler alert, if you want to call it that: I still don't know. This is a report of a journey that hasn't reached the destination. The outer circle is 242.5 m (796 ft) in diameter. The inner circle is less regular, and is about 150 m (490 ft) across. The figure is not really very large.

I first looked back in time, which is why I did this in Google Earth. The earliest clear satellite photo is from 2003, where it appears that some recent activity had taken place:

I shifted the view a little when making this screen capture, to show a series of small craters in the desert floor to the east of the figure. The craters are about 10 m (~34 ft) in diameter. I'll return to them in a moment.

The six squares in the six triangles each contain some darkish object. In 2003, which is less clear, they look like they may be battle tanks. This closeup of the area in 2022 shows something quite different:

Three of the items are seen. They look like missiles. I can't even guess about the object at the center of the figure. This is the sharpest image available at present. I wonder what the missiles are defending?

The 10 meter craters are probably bomb craters. They are much too small to represent nuclear munitions. This image shows craters from fission bomb tests in the 1950's at the Nevada Test Site (as it was popularly called):

This image has the same scale as the prior two. The central blast-exit holes are much larger than 10 m, and the collapse craters are in the 100-150 m range. Here is an overview of a 7x10 km portion of the Nevada Test Site as it appears today:

This area is about 80 km (50 mi) SSE of the circle-star figure we are looking at. The Test Site is in an area now administered by the Dept. of Energy, while our figure is in the middle of the Tonopah Test Range. Both are portions of the Nellis Air Force Range Complex, and entirely surrounded by BLM lands.

I would say that our figure is in a pole of inaccessibility. I decided to look nearby for more clues. About 2.5 km (~1.5 mi) to the west we find an interesting complex:

This image from 2022 shows three walled areas. What look like structures are really various things. The block to the left appears to contain ammunition dumps. The brown square inside a small walled area at lower center seems to be a very old metal building with holes in the roof. What look like small buildings to the right and upper center are mostly various assemblages of shipping containers. Note the black shadows of some kinds of pillars at the corners and midpoints of the walls around two of the sections. Based on a visit I made to a Minuteman missile silo I made many years ago, I surmise that these are motion detectors. I looked back into time:

The images are dated. The earliest one that is somewhat clear is from 2003. The image from 1985 (Landsat, which was the epitome of high resolution at the time!), shows at least that the complex was there already. I suspect it dates from the 1950s. The pillars are seen in the 2014 image, not before. Each image shows a different arrangement of shipping containers. The ammunition bunkers, if that is what they are, appeared after 2014 and before 2020 (which I didn't show here). The square brown thing also appeared after 2014. That's all I can extract from these images at this resolution.

Another area about 3 km (~2 mi) NNE of our figure looks like an early layout for the roads of a suburb:

The area of this image is 3.5x5 km. I included the circle-star so we can see how close it is. The dark spots along cross-shaped portion midway along the connecting road may look like dwellings at this scale, but they are really arrangements of shipping containers.

For this area also I looked into the past. I went back until the "roads" looked fresh, in 2006. The prior year, they are not present at all:

The option that comes to mind is the intention to build a fake suburb to blow up with a nuclear bomb, such as was done elsewhere; a video about one is here. The atmospheric test ban treaty (1963) would have put an end to it.

Earlier I called this area a "pole of inaccessibility." When you enter the coordinates of this point into Google Maps, it is labeled Pahrump, Nevada. However, the actual town of Pahrump is 150 km (93 mi) to the NNE. The nearest paved highway is US 95 (quite different from I-95 along the east coast), about 20 km (12 mi) to the SW. I could find no roads of any kind connecting US 95 to the dirt roads in this area.

Some dirt roads go north, but not in any straightforward way. A broad valley between this area and US 6 some 75-80 km (47-50 mi) to the north is crisscrossed by ephemeral dirt roads. US 6 goes between Tonopah and the real Pahrump, and further to the NE. In other directions, the picture is the same. I suspect the only way to get "here" is by helicopter…unless you walk, and can carry about ten gallons of drinking water. Even in winter the dry Nevada air will suck at least a gallon per day out of you; been there, done that.

Searching out roads to the north I encountered this (the area is about 10x16 km, or 7x10 mi):

Near the center of the concentric circular arcs is a hiking area called "Nye's Giant Target" on Google Maps; it has the sublabel "(small)". This image is from 2012, when the lines were clearer; they have suffered wear through time. Maybe this is a desert version of a crop circle…

There you have it. My speculations, or rather semi-educated guesses. There's no solution to these mysteries outside of military records that have probably been almost forgotten. It is simply fun to traipse around—virtually—to see what is out there.