Why a Man Built a Time Machine in the California Desert

In 1947, an aircraft mechanic named George Van Tassel quit his job as Howard Hughes’s flight test inspector, moved his family to a seven-story boulder in the Mojave Desert, and spent the next three decades building a white wooden dome he claimed could reverse aging, counteract gravity, and allow time travel. He said the plans came from a visitor from Venus. The dome still stands at 2477 Belfield Boulevard in Landers, California — three miles south of Giant Rock, where Van Tassel hosted the Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention for thousands of believers every year through the 1950s and 1960s. He died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before the machine was supposed to be switched on. It never was. Today the Integratron is owned by three sisters who use its extraordinary acoustics for sound baths. The machine inside was never completed. The building itself is on the National Register of Historic Places. Sources: Daniel Paul, “Integratron: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form,” United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 2018. “About: The History of the Integratron,” integratron.com. “The Huntington Acquires Archive for the Integratron and UFO Movement,” The Huntington Library, 2026. “Giant Rock, Space People and the Integratron,” PBS SoCal / Artbound, 2018. “San Bernardino County History: Giant Rock,” San Bernardino County, 2025. Rosemary Evans, “Giant Rock,” Desert Magazine, May 1981.