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Four men removed the mysterious metal monolith placed in a remote part of Utah, according to an eyewitness.
The three-sided stainless steel structure first spotted by wildlife officials counting sheep in southeastern Utah on Nov. 18 was dismantled on Friday evening by a team of four working in pairs and were pushing her to the ground, The New York Times reported.
Ross Bernards, a 34-year-old Colorado photographer, told the newspaper he had driven six hours earlier that night to get a glimpse of the peculiar structure that sparked speculation around the world about how it got there because it was illegally installed on public land.
After pushing the monolith to the ground, Bernards said, the men broke it and took it away in a wheelbarrow, The New York Times reported.
“As they left with the pieces, one of them said, ‘Leave no trace,’ Bernards told the newspaper.
Worried about a possible confrontation and suspecting that the men might be armed, Bernards decided not to take pictures of them. However, he posted other photos on Instagram. But a friend of his from Denver, James Newlands, 38, managed to get a few pictures with his cell phone, he said.
“It took them 10 or 15 minutes at most to knock over the monolith and remove it,” Newlands told the newspaper. “We didn’t know who they were and we weren’t going to do anything to stop them.”
Newlands said the men were determined to leave with the 10-foot structure.
“They just came to perform and they were like, ‘This is our mission,’” Newlands recalls.
Blurry snapshots of Newlands show several men wearing gloves – but without masks – while standing over the monolith, which is hollow and has a plywood frame, the Times reported.
The Newlands images are the only known taken of the monolith being removed. It is not known whether the men who took it apart were responsible for its installation. The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said early Sunday that it knew the item had been removed, but said it did not have the “proper resources” to probe its puzzling appearance and subsequent removal.
“However, with hundreds of people visiting the area over the past few days, maybe someone has seen something suspicious,” sheriff officials said. “If you recognize anyone from the programming provided as being in the area of the strange structure on the night of November 27, please let us know!”
Google Earth images, meanwhile, show that it appeared between August 2015 and October 2016.
Large numbers of people flocked to the site during Thanksgiving week, leaving garbage and parking over vegetation behind, according to the Bureau of Land Management.
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