The Sundial

The sundial was installed on Friday, March 19, 2010, exactly 100 years after standard time zones went into effect. On Saturday, March 20, 2010 it was dedicated. That was also National Quilting Day and the first day of spring.

Thanks to designers Bob Hampton and Martin Webster, installer Jeff Phillips, helpers David McIntosh, Norm Rabek and Jake Blood, and other helpers Cynthia Blood, Janis Holder and Estela Shakelford. Special thanks to Chuck Randolph for last minute help with the gnomon.

Thanks also to Mountain Lifestyle Communities, our corporate underwriter for the celebration cake and to the Mayor of Burnsville, Danny McIntosh for his introductory remarks at the Dedication Ceremony.

Sundial was the brainchild of Bob Hampton and over a year in the making. Bob did the math for the sundial and Martin did the graphic design.

Sundial shows local solar time (the time Burnsville used before the advent of Time Zones), Eastern Standard Time and Eastern Daylight Time.

Stars at the top of the sundial are positioned as they were the first dawn of Yancey County, Dec. 29, 1833. The gnomon (pronounced "no-mon") points to Polaris, the North Star.

The Equation of Time represented by the mountains across the bottom of the sundial shows the number of minutes to add or subtract to any given day to achieve accurate clock time.

This is the world's first quilt block sundial and the largest vertical sundial in North Carolina. It is also our 150th quilt block.