If you’ve been to Island Park, you’ve noticed the “big ball” up on top of Sawtelle Peak. If you’ve asked yourself (or others) exactly what it is, I’d say you’re about average. The problem is, very few people know exactly what it is. There are no indications on the door. No signs telling you what it is — only onerous warnings to stay clear under penalty of the government.
I’ve heard people explaining to their friends that it’s part of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line of defense radar. I’ve heard it’s a listening post, where the government eavesdrops on cell phone conversations (interesting, since it predates cell phones by several decades.)  I’ve heard it’s a secret government laboratory where they do experiments many stories underground and use the radar dome to beam results to other secret locations in the world. Finally, the funniest one. I heard someone telling a flatlander that it was a site the government used to contact UFO’s. She went on to say that UFO’s land on top of Sawtelle all the time.
Whatever.
So what is it really? At the risk of a big disappointment to many, I’ll come clean. It’s a remote FAA radar site used by Billings, Boise, and Salt Lake City to track aircraft movement across the northern tier of states (you didn’t think they could see planes in Montana from Salt Lake, did you?) If you’ve ever flown over the area from St. George, Utah to the Canadian border and from Minot, North Dakota to Pendleton, Oregon your plane was tracked by our radar.
Sorry if I’ve let the wind out of your sails. FAA radar isn’t nearly as impressive as aliens from outer space. But hey, if you can keep a secret, a friend of a friend told me she was up there late one night when the sky lit up with UFO’s tracking inbound to the U.S. government contact portal on Sawtelle Peak. Hey. Seriously. It could happen.
Yeah, right.
It’s a good conversation piece…in spite of itself.