2 men admit to hauling off Utah monolith, say they did it to protect nature
Two Utah outdoorsmen have revealed they are responsible for the mysterious disappearance of the desert monolith that captivated thousands.
The monolith appeared to be straight out Stanley Kubrick’s epic “2001: A Space Odyssey,” drawing hundreds of people to the remote southeast Utah desert.
But it vanished overnight last Friday, leading to tongue-in-cheek speculation that extraterrestrials didn’t appreciate all the attention.
The dismantlers were quite terrestrial though: extreme outdoor athletes Sylvan Christensen and Andy Lewis, to be exact.
Christensen and Lewis said they removed the monolith because all the attention it attracted resulted in destruction of the pristine landscape surrounding it.
“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 wrote in an Instagram post.
Christensen also noted how the surrounding land had been covered with trash and tracks. He said that he and Lewis supported public art, but the “internet sensationalism” was too much.
“Let’s be clear: The dismantling of the Utah Monolith is tragic — and if you think we’re proud — we’re not. We’re disappointed,” Christensen wrote. “Furthermore, we were too late.”
A Colorado photographer saw Christensen and Lewis taking the monolith down and said “they were right to take it out.”
The Bureau of Land Management, which is in charge of the land where the monolith used to stand, said it would not investigate the removal. The San Juan County sheriff said the same, since no one claimed the monolith and it stood on public property, the Associated Press reported.
The BLM has said it will investigate the installation of the monolith, because “using, occupying, or developing the public lands or their resources without a required authorization is illegal, no matter what planet you are from.”
