People hunting for ‘monolith’ left behind toilet paper and poop, Utah officials say

People searching for a mysterious metal monolith in Utah’s desert trashed public lands, the Bureau of Land Management said.

Visitors searching for the object “flocked to the site” and left behind human waste and toilet paper, the Bureau of Land Management said Sunday.

“The undeveloped area does not have restrooms or a parking lot,” officials said. “The BLM recommends that visitors not attempt to visit the site, which has no cell service and requires high clearance vehicles; passenger vehicles have already been towed from the area.”

Last week, news of an alien-like sheet of metal found “in the middle of nowhere” spread uncontrollably on social media and in the news.

Officials begged people not to go looking for it, and they didn’t post the object’s location. It was found anyway, and many people posted the coordinates of the monolith to social media and posed for photos with the alluring object.

“Over the course of Thanksgiving week, a relatively large number of people visited the site, which has not been developed for heavy visitation,” the Bureau of Land Management said.

Since then, the “monolith” was removed by an “unknown party” sometime on Friday, the Bureau of Land Management said.

“The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) confirmed during a site visit on Saturday that an unknown party or parties removed the illegally installed structure referred to as the ‘monolith’ sometime on the evening of Friday, Nov. 27,” officials said. “The BLM did not remove the structure which had been recently discovered on public lands in the Monticello Field Office.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 1:36 PM with the headline "People hunting for ‘monolith’ left behind toilet paper and poop, Utah officials say."