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LAS VEGAS — Three years since a mysterious monolith appeared in the Utah wilderness, a new one was found in the mountains near Las Vegas.
On Monday, the Las Vegas Police Department said search and rescue workers spotted the reflective monolith near Gass Peak over the weekend.
"We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water ... but check this out!" the department posted on Facebook.
In November 2020, Utah Division of Wildlife Resource officers found a 12-foot-tall shiny metal monolith in the remote wilderness of San Juan County while counting bighorn sheep in a helicopter.
A few days after its discovery, the Bureau of Land Management said the monolith disappeared from its spot. Utah authorities said they had nothing to do with its removal.
In December, Sylvan Christensen said he and his group removed the monolith, stating it was to save the nearby wildlife and public lands.
"We removed the Utah monolith because there are clear precedents for how we share and standardize the use of our public lands, natural wildlife, native plants, freshwater sources, and human impacts upon them. The mystery was the infatuation and we want to use this time to unite people behind the real issues here— we are losing our public lands— things like this don't help," Christensen said in a written statement.
While the monolith was in the wilderness, witnesses told KSL that the area was filled with trash and other waste. One man said there was a plane parked in the remote area to see the monolith.
"This land wasn't physically prepared for the population shift (especially during a pandemic). People arrived by car, by bus, by van, helicopter, planes, trains, motorcycles, and E-bikes and there isn't even a parking lot," Christensen's statement said. "There aren't bathrooms — and yes, pooping in the desert is a misdemeanor. There was a lot of that. There are no marked trails, no trash cans, and it's not a user group area."
On Christensen's Instagram account, he said that he was receiving death threats and personal attacks for taking the monolith. In the post, he showed that the monolith was not destroyed and it was in the hands of BLM.
The sighting of the Utah monolith attracted national attention, ranging from skits from late-night shows to more monoliths appearing across the world.
To this day, no one knows who placed the Utah monolith.
And with the new Las Vegas one, police are now asking, "How did it get up there??"
