#Utah’s mysterious monolith disappears from desert

A mysterious metal monolith that was recently discovered in the southern Utah desert has now disappeared, officials said Saturday.

The ten-foot-high silver structure — which was installed illegally — was removed by an “unknown party” on Friday, the Bureau of Land Management said in a statement.

The BLM said its employees did not remove the structure, which was on public lands but which was itself still considered to be “private property.”

“We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office.”

The Utah Department of Public Safety first discovered the monolith on Nov. 18.

Crew members had been flying a helicopter over the desert to help the Utah Division of Wildlife Resource count bighorn sheep when they saw the odd structure.

“One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” pilot Bret Hutchings told KSL-TV.

“He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘What.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’”