This 1972 sketch for an outdoor sculpture was drawn on stationery from the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City, the closest city to the Great Basin Desert where Holt would later site Sun Tunnels (1973–1976). Her annotations show the sketch is for a sculpture to be arranged on a plain and that it would measure 7 by 7 feet. The telephone numbers are—we believe, based on current searches—for a real estate agency and a concrete casting company.

In 1972 she also completed Missoula Ranch Locators—Vision Encompassed, an outdoor sculpture comprising eight Locators arranged in a circle and viewable from both sides. Although the forms in this drawing resemble Locators seen from above, the cylinders are closer to the drawings Holt would later make for Sun Tunnels.

Holt notes from the dates of Sun Tunnels (1973–1976) that work on the landmark sculpture began in 1973. She first considered locating the work in either New Mexico or Arizona. She rejected the former because of overhead power cables and the latter because the cacti were too charismatic. Rejecting both sites, she recalled the views across the Great Basin Desert from visits to Utah during the construction of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), where the landscape appeared uninterrupted by power and transport infrastructure.