Project

Durango Solar System Project

Now Arts & Culture Climate Outdoor / Place

Director, 2023 to present

The solar system at a scale of one to 670 million, built as public art along six miles of the Animas River Trail. An 8-foot sun sets the scale, and nine local artists made the planets in glass, metal, and recycled plastic. Pluto would have landed out in Three Springs, so it stayed off the list. Durango's lodgers tax paid for it, and I have led the project since 2023.

The signature line

Dollars Raised (USD)

Make the sun the size of a small car, and Earth is a quarter, 263 yards away.

I have been fascinated by outer space since I was a kid. A few years ago I started wondering what it would take to put the whole solar system along the Animas River Trail in Durango, built to scale, so you ride the distance between the planets instead of reading it.

An eight-foot sun sets the scale. From there the model runs six miles of trail. Pluto would have landed out in Three Springs, so it stayed off the list.

Getting there took two years of city policy, permitting, and funding. Durango’s lodgers tax paid for it, through the Arts and Culture Fund that puts hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into creative projects. Nine local artists made the planets, in glass, metal, and recycled plastic. Steve Williams made Saturn.

It is the funkiest solar system I know of, which is perfectly Durango. When the last planet goes in, we are going to ride the whole thing together.

I have led the Durango Solar System Project since 2023.

What's in the ledger

Modeled social value (2026 USD): $570
Capital raised: $52,662
Every dollar given became: $0.01
Years of impact: 2024 to 2025
Tenure length: 4 years
Data points: 3

About this ratio

The ledger records dollars given for just 2 years of this venture's life, so the ratio is likely inflated: $570 of modeled value against $52.7K of recorded raise. I’ll continue to fill in data to resolve this.

If under a dollar, the ledger is likely undercounting this venture: the model prices only part of the work so far, so the value side runs low.

If it keeps going

About these figures

A researched projection of this venture's annual steady state, from the same ledger database. It is never added into the recorded figures above; the methodology page explains the rule.

Social value per year (projected): $570

What I built, and what it became

What I built

through today

Dollars Raised $52,662

Public Art Viewers (Incidental) 365,000 viewer passes

Every metric this Idea tracks

The numbers

Public Art Viewers (Incidental): 365,000 viewer passes

Linked writing

From Art to Capital and Back Again read What the Heck Are You Doing? read

Sources and confidence

Verified 2 Estimated 1

About these sources

I'm still adding published source links for this venture. The confidence grades show where each number came from: annual reports, filings, internal records, or a model.

Where these figures come from

Every figure on this page is one row in the impact ledger: a value, a year, a source, and a confidence grade. Dollar figures apply that metric's locked multiplier, CPI-adjusted to 2026 USD; capital raised is reported on its own and never counted as social value. Read the full methodology .