Origins of the Sun West Ranch Symbol

The rising sun motif now used as the Sun West Ranch logo originally came not from a drafting table but from the land itself.

Just to the northeast and visible from most of Sun West Ranch is a long flat-topped bench overlooking the Madison River, and it was here that native peoples arranged a rising sun from cairns of rockûstill partially standing today.

Stanford University researchers later determined that each of the sun's rays pointed to a distant cairn, and a person standing at each of these points could see and signal to the others.