cover of July, 2008 issue of American Surveyor magazine

Oooh, this is a good one! *rubs hands together* In March 2007 a group of people, some of them surveyors, built this Icehenge for the 41st annual Alaska Surveying and Mapping Conference in Fairbanks, which happened to fall at the same time as the Ice Alaska Ice Art Championship competition. Over 100 blocks of ice were used to create a full-sized replica of the inside of Stonehenge, using a pair of arcs of low posts to suggest the outer ring of sarsens.

Let’s see:  Inner bluestone circle? Check! Trilithon horseshoe? Check! Inner bluestone horseshoe? Check! Altar stone? Check! Okay so there are no Aubrey holes or ditch and bank but, people, these builders did their homework. We can subtract a bit for incorrect stone shapes and missing elements and still have a lot of druids left over for this henge!

Click through this thumbnail (photo by Tula Belton) to see the American Surveyor article pdf with amazing pictures. And check out the Ice Alaska website for another set of pictures.  We like it that, because the sculpture would not live to summer solstice, they decided to orient it toward the sun position at noon on vernal equinox.

Yes, we’re effusing–so sue us. We don’t run across a Stonehenge replica like this every day. (In the future perhaps . . . ?) Score: 9 druids for this huge ice (megapagic?) monument. More, please!