BELLVUE — On top of a hill prickly with dry grass and cacti is a four-sided structure that looks like the sky, the hills and the small crowd of people standing next to it, but it’s none of those things. It’s not a riddle, it’s a monolith. Perhaps the 247th spotted worldwide since 2020. 

It appeared unexpectedly on Sunday in Bellvue, northwest of Fort Collins, on the expansive property of Rob and Lori Graves, who own Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, a Noosa Yoghurt factory, and the Howling Cow Cafe. A cafe manager spotted the structure in the distance as she arrived at work in the morning, but didn’t think anything of it until a customer came in and asked to be pointed toward “the alien structure.” 

The Howling Cow has been part of the farm property since 2014, and has become a popular cycling stop that serves the dairy’s fresh creams and yogurts. As of Monday, though, it’s become a gathering place for bagel sandwiches and hypotheses about alien life. 

On a chalkboard menu, drink names have been given an extraterrestrial spin. Order the “Beam Me Up” for a cold brew with a double shot, or a “Radio Wave” for an Italian soda with cold foam. The monthly ice cream flavor, orange juice shake, has been relabeled the “Cow Abduction.” Alien figures drawn on the menu have thought bubbles that read: “beep beep boop beep.”

“They probably just weren’t getting enough business,” one diner offered.

Marketing ploy or not, the shiny metal monolith, bolted to a slab of concrete, certainly hasn’t hurt business.

By 11 a.m. Thursday a line had formed in the cafe from the counter to the door, a dozen customers long, and didn’t let up until well after noon. A second rush arrived around 2 p.m.

“Been busy?” a customer asked a barista from the line.

The barista nodded and laughed. “Where’s the monolith?” she said mockingly. Then she softened. “Actually, it’s kind of cool. I just can’t say that word anymore.”

Then she pushed a milky green beverage onto the counter: “Crop Circle!” she yelled into the crowd, the cafe’s new name for a matcha latte with vanilla. 

Monolith #1

The monolith mysteries began in November 2020, when a crew from the Utah Department of Public Safety was flying over remote, desert backcountry counting bighorn sheep. They spotted an unusual metal gleam deep in a slot canyon, and landed the helicopter to investigate. There they found the first mysteriously placed monolith, a roughly 10-foot-tall prism lodged into the red earth.

Photos and videos from the incident were posted to the agency’s blog. “Please don’t try and visit the site as the road is not suitable for most Earth-based vehicles,” the agency tweeted. 

But this was late 2020, six months into deep pandemic isolation. Internet sleuthing was at an all-time high and the prospect of visiting a remote site in the desert where few people had been, and were unlikely to be, was simply too tempting. 

A subreddit sprung up, r/FindTheMonolith, and more than 3,000 people joined it to theorize about its origin and locate the Utah phenomenon. In less than 24 hours a location was pinpointed and posted to Reddit, and some users used Google Earth imagery to determine that it was placed sometime in late 2015 or early 2016. To some, the timeline added to the appeal of the piece. It was still possible, in an age of satellite imagery and social media stunts, to leave a mark that went completely undetected for years. 

Less than two weeks after its viral debut, the monolith was gone — hauled away in the night by a group of four men concerned with the environmental impact of so many visitors on the delicate Utah backcountry. 

But while the men trucked the monolith out of the desert, something strange was happening halfway around the world — the same day the Utah monolith came down, a second monolith was reported on a plateau near Piatra Neamt in Romania. Days later a third popped up in Atascadero, California. 

Over the course of 2020, dozens more monoliths were reported to monolithtracker.com, a mix of hastily placed copycats and “S-Class” monoliths, or “significant monoliths, well made, with zero explanations of appearance,” according to the website’s six-part classification system. The original Utah monolith and the quick Romanian follow-up are two of three “S-Class” monoliths in the world. The third appeared in Spain in April 2021.

According to The Associated Press, the Bureau of Land Management is still actively investigating the Utah case.

Colorado’s monolith culture

In Colorado, three monoliths have been spotted and reported to the site. The first showed up in December 2020 at the Spaceport in Watkins. It was reported to have been fabricated by Bill Zempel, the owner of neighboring Mile High Aircraft Servicers, making it a “K-Class” monolith, or a monolith of “known origin.”

The next two showed up days later, at Sunlight Mountain near Glenwood Springs and Chautauqua Park in Boulder. Though their origin hasn’t yet been determined, they are deemed “Q-Class,” or “questionable monoliths,” likely to be knockoffs “considering their origin or appearance.”

Monolith spotting slowed down into 2021 and the site went all but dormant until March this year, when one showed up in Wales. Earlier this month, a second monolith appeared outside of Las Vegas, but was promptly removed by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — just a day before the one showed up at the dairy in Bellvue. The Las Vegas and Bellvue monoliths have not been classified yet.

“I know a lot of people are in a hurry to get here because they’re afraid it’s going to disappear,” Graves said. “I kind of hope it stays, I mean it’s kind of pretty.” 

There are a lot of maybes that hover around monoliths. Maybe it’s an ad. Maybe it’s a TV prop. Maybe it was placed there by a prankster, an artist, a mischievous neighbor, the U.S. government. Maybe it was placed on Earth by aliens. Maybe we’re the aliens. 

Of course, part of the fascination depends on not having the answer to its origin. The most likely “maybe” with the monoliths is that maybe few people want to know in the first place.  

By Thursday afternoon Graves was getting reports that some Instagram commenters had turned against the monolith. “Not so favorable posts,” one of the baristas texted her. “I didn’t even know we had a picture of it on our Instagram,” Graves said.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of visitors made their way up the hill, took photos with it, speculated about whether it would be struck by lightning or start a wildfire. 

The baristas, for their part, were feeling worked, despite having bumped their staffing up to accommodate the weeklong rush. They were out of sandwich bread. A compressor was on the fritz. “We can’t really sustain this,” Graves said. “I think it’s going to be a blip.”

But until the hype dies down or the pillar gets beamed up, the Howling Cow Cafe will keep serving Monolith Mochas.