CEDAR CITY, Utah, April 4, 2021 (Gephardt Daily) — A pre-Easter family outing to the Three Peaks area near Cedar City turned much more intriguing when a member of the Anderson family came upon a shiny metal monolith that had not been there on previous trips.
“We come here every year,” Bruce Anderson, of Cedar City, told Gephardt Daily. “I think it was Thursday that some of the kids were riding ATVs and one came back and took us out to show us.”
What the kids had found was a human-made monolith, much like others found since late 2020, when the first was found in Utah’s San Juan County. Since then, multiple copycat monoliths have appeared around the world.
But the Anderson clan had never seen one until last week, when two dozen or so family members and friends headed out for springtime camping. Anderson’s four sons, ages 10 through 19, and their cousins were part of the group.
“I’m thinking they must have put the monolith up in the last week, or maybe in the last month,” Anderson said.
This monolith seemed a little more elaborate than those previously in the news, he said.
“This one had solar panels on top, which you could see if you stood on the rocks and looked down at it. It has a button you push and this really cool drawer comes out, and it has an Egyptian-looking symbol with an eye. It’s got some resin in it, and a copper plate dropping from a little key chain.”
The symbol appears to be the Eye of Horus, which, according to the Johns Hopkins Archeological Museum is “a healing and regenerative entity, thought to bring health and safety to its wearer” and to “help the dead pass safely into the afterlife …”
And then there was the the message on the thin copper plates.
“It was ‘HUMAN May 4TH,’ and some GPS coordinates,” Anderson said. “So they put a little time and thought into making this.”
Anderson and the kids tracked down the coordinates, and the location came up in Hubei, China. But they suspect a typo, with a possible missing plus or minus symbol. With the addition of that symbol, the GPS location given would be much closer, in Caliente, Nevada, Anderson said.
The monolith itself stands about 10 feet tall and three to four feet wide, Anderson said. Two sides of the triangular structure appear to be made of something like stainless steel. The third side may be a two-way plexiglass mirror, he said.
And one more thing: The drawer that pops out to reveal the eye symbol and the copper tags has a counter on it.
“When we first saw it, it was in the 170s,” Anderson said. “When we went back Saturday, the counter number was at about 1,200.”
Anderson said most of the button pushes probably happened after a new story ran. He does admit that the kids in his party added a few early button pushes to the counter total.
Anderson said his family has had a fun spring vacation talking about the monolith, the symbols and the people who may have placed it there.
“It’s just been fun for family entertainment,” he said. “The kids have been talking about it. They just think it’s so cool. We’ve talked about aliens, and time and energy someone’s put into this. Everyone’s got their own conspiracy theory. It’s just weird.
“We’ve been coming here for years, but this is one Easter we will never forget.”
Anderson said high public interest has already had its cost.
“The drawer has already been ripped out,” he said. “There’s been vandalism. I would hope people would be respectful of the land and things out here. Let’s not drop garbage and destroy everything.”
