Mysterious truck pulled out of Colorado River near Moab
Mar 20, 2018, 2:50 PM | Updated: 4:47 pm
MOAB – You can catch a lot fishing the Colorado River near Moab, just usually not a rusty truck.
“We don’t know anything about the vehicle or who owns it,” said Jeff Arbon, a Utah State Park Ranger in the Moab area. This past Friday, for the first time in maybe 20 years, a 1970’s Chevy Pickup saw sunlight.
Rangers had to take it out because of lower water levels in the Colorado River this season. There were metal edges sticking up almost out of the water.
“The vehicle was in a high traffic area with swimmers and boaters, so we deemed it a water hazard and decided to remove the vehicle from the river,” said Arbon. Dive teams from Utah State Parks and the Utah Department of Public Safety were able to find a way to wrap a chain around the truck to pull it out of the water with a large tow truck.
Divers said they were dealing with murky conditions, especially with all the silt that had collected inside the truck. No one knows for sure when the truck sunk into the water. The license plates are long gone, and there is plenty of corrosion on the truck.
It’s near a boat ramp, which leads Arbon to think maybe the emergency brake failed and it rolled into the water near the pedestrian bridge off Highway 191. The Grand County sheriff’s office will run the VIN to see if they can figure out the mystery.
