Jeff Bezos' fiancée did a Vogue photoshoot inside the '10,000 Year Clock' — here's what the structure built beneath a mountain is all about
Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
- Jeff Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, posed inside the 10,000 Year Clock in a photoshoot by Vogue.
- The clock only ticks once a year. It also has a cuckoo alarm that goes off once every 1,000 years.
- Bezos funded the project, but the concept was developed by Danny Hillis and the Long Now Foundation.
A Vogue feature of Jeff Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, featured an iconic photoshoot of the couple in Western Texas.
The lead photo shows Sanchez posing amidst a unique background — deep underground in a structure that's intriguingly called the 10,000-Year Clock.
The clock has a fascinating backstory, and getting to it isn't exactly easy.
It's located inside a mountain in the Western Texas desert that's part of the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range. It's a several-hour drive away from the nearest airport and nearly 2,000 feet above the valley floor.
In the Vogue interview, Sanchez describes the trek to the clock as "quite a workout." The property also isn't too far from Bezos' ranch near Van Horn, Texas. The ranch includes a bunkhouse that sleeps 12 people. It's best known as the location where Blue Origin rocket launches take place.
In the photo, Sanchez can be seen lying on the staircase inside the clock, wearing a sparkly red Dolce and Gabbana dress. Sanchez told Vogue that the 10,000-Year Clock is meant to "represent the future," but that it could also be a fun location to host a Halloween party.
This clock doesn't calculate time the same way that your typical watch does. The clock only ticks once a year, with a "century hand" that only moves once every 100 years, according to the clock's website. The clock also has a cuckoo that only chirps once every 1,000 years.
Bezos began funding the clock project back in 2011. The clock is meant to encourage people to think decades and centuries into the future and think about how our current actions will impact those far into the future.
The concept of the clock was conceived of by inventor Danny Hillis and promoted by the Long Now Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on long-term thinking, in the 1990s. Bezos helped fund the project, giving engineers$42 million.
The clock can be wound by visitors or by solar energy. Being built into a mountain will help keep the clock safe from the elements.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez got engaged in May after dating for about four years. They began dating in 2019, shortly after news that he was divorcing ex-wife Mackenzie Scott became public. Sanchez is a licensed helicopter pilot and used to be a news anchor for Fox 11 in Los Angeles.