On your next trip to Las Vegas, you can take a few minutes to head off the 15 Freeway to a checkout large metal megaphone attached to some rocks and, while you’re there, maybe you can figure out just why in the hell this thing exists and who put it there.
Atlas Obscura details the weird desert item:
This large, megaphone-shaped mystery object (some say it’s shaped like a venturi) is bolted to two rocks on top of a 100-foot hill along a remote strip of desert between the towns of Baker and Ludlow. It’s about 8 feet long, made from thick strips of iron welded together. Many travelers and historians alike have searched for an explanation of how it got there, and for what reason. But while theories abound, the answer remains elusive.
One theory suggests that the megaphone was used to amplify a siren that alerted locals when the U.S. Army was conducting secret chemical or gas testing in the area. Another wildly different theory posits that visitors would hike out there and stretch a skin over the ends of the object to play it like a drum. Whatever the origins, catching a glimpse of this mysterious “megaphone” atop the rocks is a strange and unexpected sight indeed.
Oh the odd things you find in the middle of the desert.
If you want to check it out, it’s atop a 100-foot hill, west of Crucero Road about 14 miles south of the 15 Freeway. It’s a dirt road, so maybe plan on taking a 4-wheel-drive.
