Henderson lights in shape of Nevada go missing from mountain

The bright lights outlining the shape of Nevada featured on a Henderson mountain disappeared this week.

The red and white solar-powered lights that have been positioned off the northern loop of the Black Mountain trail since April 17 went missing sometime between Saturday and Tuesday, according to local attorney David Koch, who placed them up there eight months ago.

“We had gone up on Saturday to turn the heart back to red. Before Christmas we had turned them to red and green. The next day, Sunday the 27th, it was kind of cloudy and that night the lights didn’t come on,” Koch said. “The same thing on Monday, cloudy and rainy and I thought maybe something happened to them. Tuesday was a sunny day. There was plenty of sun for the lights and none of them came on that night.”

Koch hiked the steep hill Tuesday night and discovered no traces of the 60 lights that made the shape of Nevada with a heart over Clark County. He thought perhaps the Bureau of Land Management had removed them because the group had reached a deal with Koch that lights could only stay up until the end of the year.

But a BLM spokesman told Koch on Wednesday that the BLM didn’t take the lights down. Koch called it comical, because he was just about to lug the heavy lights back down the mountain this upcoming weekend. It took Koch and his 18-year-old son, Mason, 11 hours to carry four duffel bags to the site and put them up.

“It’s not an easy task to pull them down,” Koch said. “I’m not offended, but I kind of feel bad for the community.”

Koch said he had planned to keep them up for only a week but reached a deal with BLM for them to stay up longer. He said he often received online messages from people who were struggling during the pandemic and found solace in the glittering lights, which could be seen from downtown Henderson to the Mountain’s Edge area.

“One lady said her brother had passed away over the summer and she’d still go walk at night and look up at the lights,” Koch said. “Someone else was going through cancer and felt alone and would see the lights.”

If he had been able to take down the lights this weekend, Koch had planned to give them away to anyone who had donated to a local charity. He said he’d keep two of them as souvenirs.

Koch now has no plans to file a police report, though the cost of the missing lights is about $1,400. He just hopes that someone will anonymously reach out or drop them back on the mountain.

“Maybe somebody, somewhere saw something. I’m not going to pursue some criminal investigation,” he said. “If a person or people want to bring them back, no questions asked. I don’t need a name. If they want solar lights for their house, I’ll buy them solar lights.”

Koch said BLM offered him several other pieces of real estate that aren’t protected land if he’d like to put lights up again. He said that he isn’t planning to repeat the lights many residents have become so familiar with, but that he’d gladly help if anyone else is planning something similar.

“This was something I hadn’t heard any complaints about,” he said. “It was one of the positive things during the pandemic.”

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.