Arts & Entertainment
340-Ton Boulder Coming Through Diamond Bar Friday
The enormous rock is slowly making its way from Riverside County to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and will cause temporary street closures in Diamond Bar.
After , a 340-ton boulder will slowly make its way from Riverside County to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), with Diamond Bar on its route.
The 21-and-a-half foot tall boulder will start its journey February 28, and is expected to pass through the city the night of March 2. It will be gone by the morning of March 3. According to Cecilia Arellano, public information coordinator with the city of Diamond Bar, there will be partial, temporary closures of portions of several city roads, including Grand Avenue, Diamond Bar Boulevard, and Pathfinder Road during different hours March 2.
Traffic is not expected to be an issue, since the boulder will be moved between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., and the hauler plans on providing notifications and changeable message signs 48 to 72 hours in advance, to inform motorists of the anticipated road closures.
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The rock will be part of artist Michael Heizer’s permanent exhibit, “Levitated Mass,” which museum officials hope will be open by late spring or early summer. According to LACMA Communications Director Miranda Carroll, Heizer had to have the rock after he discovered it in 2007.
“He definitely wanted something from that quarry, because it's California granite,” she said.
Find out what's happening in Diamond Bar-Walnutwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
To get to LACMA, the boulder will travel through four counties and 22 cities while going at a speed of 8 miles per hour. It will only be moved late at night and in the early morning, on a specially made transporter that is 200 feet long and three-freeway lanes wide.
Diamond Bar was not originally on the route for the boulder, but organizers discovered that taking the most direct route on freeways - the 60 and the 10 - just wouldn't be possible, due to the size of the rock and the strain it would have on bridges.
Instead, the 11-night, 105-mile journey will detour on surface streets. Traffic signals will have to be disassembled, power lines will have to be cut, and ramps built across medians before the giant rock mover can pass. Then everything will have to be reassembled before morning commuters hit the streets.
To see a map of the boulder’s route from Riverside County to LACMA, click here. You can also follow the rock on Twitter.
- City News Service contributed to this report
