THE DOCUMENT
DOW-UAP-D174, “Utah Ranch Investigation Report April 2010”, a Department of War record from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 07, published at war.gov/ufo on 23 October 2026. The title is the release’s, taken from the file name; the war.gov site title adds a comma after Report, and the site marks the record Featured. The cover’s own title is Utah Ranch Investigation, under the BAASS logo, above a landscape photograph, the line Utah Task Force Investigation, the dates March 22 to 26, April 19 to 23, 2010, and five team members under substitution labels (p. 1, read from the page image), repeated on p. 2. The 60 pages hold a table of contents and list of figures (pp. 3, 4), an executive summary (p. 5), a map of creature sightings (pp. 6, 7), an abstract with findings (pp. 8 to 10), interview summaries with photographs and two drawings (pp. 11 to 29), plant and seed experiments (pp. 30 to 33), an appendix of a camera table, microscope images, a laboratory letter and an email printout (pp. 34 to 38), and witness description sheets (pp. 39 to 60). Pages 2 to 38 carry printed numbers one lower than the PDF page, except the map on p. 7, which has none; this briefing uses PDF pages. The report itself carries no date of issue and no signature; its latest date is 7 May 2010. No classification marking was found at the head or foot of any page. Names lie under thin-outlined white boxes labelled 1843(a)(2) or 1843(a)(3), or carrying substitution labels for BAASS staff. The property’s own name sits under a box that carries a substitution label in its margin, so that the page reads a box followed by Ranch (p. 5, read from the page image).
Why this one is worth your time
D174 is a field report. It sets down what people living around the Utah ranch told a BAASS team in March and April 2010, where they said the creatures went, what the team measured and planted, and what a laboratory made of four hair samples.
Its findings say hair samples are undergoing DNA analysis (p. 9), while its appendix holds a laboratory result on four hair samples and a BAASS email interpreting it (pp. 37, 38), which no narrative page mentions.
What the document says
The team and its aims. The executive summary says a team of four BAASS personnel, two investigators and two scientists, travelled on 22 to 26 March and 19 to 23 April 2010 to continue an ongoing investigation of the Utah property (p. 5); the cover lists five, those four and a Task Force Director (p. 1). The abstract lists four aims: to interview many people who have lived in the area, to measure baselines with portable sensor equipment, to use plants as biosensors, and to try games, puzzles and other strategies to establish communication with the source of the reported anomalies (p. 8).
Who was interviewed. As of 7 May 2010, over twenty-five people had been interviewed in person, mostly at their homes, all with first hand encounters; the page says the group consists of all life-long residents of the area within a mile or two of the property, four local police officers, eleven Native Americans (printed Native Americas) including a Shaman, a local official, twelve ranchers, six business owners and approximately fifteen members of the Mormon Church (pp. 8, 9). Those categories add up to 49; the arithmetic is this briefing’s, and the page does not say whether they overlap.
The findings to date. Six are listed (pp. 9, 10). Eleven independent witnesses describe a dog or wolf like creature, or creatures, six to seven feet tall on two legs; others describe small hairy creatures, worm like creatures, a pterodactyl like creature and “little people”, most of these reports having allegedly occurred within the last five to seven years; reports of unidentified flying objects and balls of light are interspersed. BAASS holds photographs of unidentified tracks in snow, some appearing to pass through a barbed wire fence, and hair samples from near them. Electromagnetic sweeps found a strong signal at a point on the mesa, yet to be explained and absent from previous readings; a quoted report gives two signals, at 1210, 1213 and 1216 MHz and at 1232.5, 1235.5 and 1238.5 MHz.
The map. Each eyewitness gave the place of a sighting and the creature’s last direction of travel; the team drew straight lines from those and circled their crossings in red (p. 6). The page allows that the crossings could be construed as arbitrary, notes that all three lie very close to the ranch, and says that if places for sustained night watching were to be nominated, the three could be top of the list (p. 6). The map, read from the page image, is a satellite view with five kinds of marker, white lines, three red circles and boxes over witness locations (p. 7), described here by kind because it places homes.
The interviews. Every interviewee’s name is boxed (pp. 11 to 29). A family heard a “growling roar” outside their house at about 2300 hours on 22 March 2010 and saw two human-shaped shadows at a window, approximately nine and eight feet tall, which two of them believed belonged to the dog-like creature (p. 11). Others described a figure leaping between rooftops, which one said Ute culture knows as the “Basket Lady”, a hairy arm reaching through a bedroom window in the winter of 2003, a bird like a pterodactyl, and a transparent “portal” seen about twenty years earlier (pp. 11 to 14). A man answered a biologist’s questions about a red ball of light that came within about 4 inches of his face: a rotten smell of dirt and mud, ringing in his ears, warmth, and numbness for a few minutes (pp. 15, 16). On 24 March 2010 an interviewee said that two nights before he had seen a large shadow he believed was a “Skinwalker” run past his house and into his barbed wire while his dogs chased it (p. 17). An investigator searched the fence line, found a patch of fur on a barb that matched the colour the man had described, and collected it for analysis (p. 17). A woman described a hairless creature about eight feet tall on a shed in September 2009 (p. 26), and a man drew two creatures he had seen (pp. 28, 29).
The cameras and the experiments. Game cameras were set up on the ranch and on a second property whose owner’s name is boxed, with a weekly arrangement for collecting their memory cards (pp. 5, 18). On 6 April 2010 six spiderwort and six tobacco plants were placed in a trailer at the ranch as biosensors; in April no dark green spots were present on the tobacco leaves, too soon for conclusions on mutation (pp. 30, 31). A seed experiment of peas and beans began on 22 April 2010 at BAASS as the control and at the trailer (pp. 32, 33).
The hair analysis. The laboratory’s letter, dated 27 April 2010, addressed to the Task Force Director’s label and stamped RECEIVED MAY 0 3 2010, reports four hair samples received on 2 April 2010 (p. 37, read from the page image). Sample SU-01 matched reference raccoon samples in GenBank; SU-02, SU-03 and SU-04 all exhibited the same canine sequence, which the letter says is frequently found in domestic dogs and would be expected in 9.8% to 13.8% of random dogs at the 95% confidence interval (p. 37). The BAASS email printout identifies the samples as hair from a red stained rock on the ranch, control hairs from one of the dogs on a property whose name is boxed, and short white and long black hairs from a fence near where the creature was spotted (p. 38). It says the last three sequences were identical, suggesting, though not 100% definitive, the same canine individual, and that the strong physical similarity of the control hairs to the unknown ones, with the dogs running at will on the property, strongly argues that the hairs come from the same individual. The raccoon hair, from the mesa in the January deployment, would not be out of the ordinary, it adds, since raccoons have been reported near the homesteads (p. 38, the email read from the page image throughout).
What the document does not say
Page 17 sends the reader to the Scientific Analysis section for the fur sample’s results; that section (pp. 30 to 33) holds only the plant and seed work. The abstract gives the date 7 May 2010 (p. 8), and its findings call the hair samples currently undergoing scientific DNA analysis (p. 9); the letter is dated 27 April and stamped received on 3 May (p. 37). That the findings were written before the result came back is an inference from those dates; the report does not say when each part was written. Which sample is the fur collected on p. 17 is not stated.
The email is marked Page 1 of 2, and its second page is not in the record; it is dated 03.05.2010, with 5/4/2010 at the foot of the page, and the page does not say whether the first date runs day first (p. 38). The detailed camera map that p. 18 places in the appendix is not there: the appendix lists nine camera identifiers, five marked no longer in service, with their coordinates under one 1843(a)(3) box (p. 34).
The report gives no camera or seed results, no analysed plant results, and reports no attempt at the communication its fourth aim proposes: communicat occurs once, in that aim (p. 8).
It names no sponsoring programme, agency or contract: AAWSAP, Defense Intelligence, contract and HHM402 each return zero, and DIA occurs only inside other words. The full company name appears in the cover logo (pp. 1, 2) and once in the text, in the email’s sign-off (p. 38). The war.gov site gives the record the Incident Location Las Vegas, Nevada, tags it AAWSAP and opens its description with a paragraph on AAWSAP as a DIA-administered programme: that framing is the site’s. Its description also uses words the pages do not print: handheld, tribal, acoustic, interactive and presum each return zero.
From the record
could be construed as arbitrary, particularly since it is recognized that the creatures may
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 6, the method paragraph of the map of creature sightings, on the red circles where the extrapolated lines of travel cross; the sentence continues: have changed their direction of travel once out of sight of the eyewitnesses
To initiate a variety of games, puzzles, and other strategies in order to establish
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 8, the fourth of the four aims the abstract lists; the sentence continues: communication with the source/origin of reported anomalies on the ranch property
To date, May 7, 2010, over twenty-five (25) people have been contacted and
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 8, the abstract, the sentence that dates its count of interviewees; the sentence continues: interviewed in person, predominantly at their homes
creature or creatures which have the ability to walk and run at speed on two legs.
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 9, the close of the first sentence of finding 1, on a large dog or wolf like creature or creatures
times will be required to identify the origin of these signals.
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 10, the last line of finding 6, on the signal measured at a point on the mesa; the sentence begins: Further measurements and research, particularly into satellite transmitting frequencies and
in 9.8% to 13.8% of random dogs at the 95% confidence interval.
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 37, the laboratory’s letter of 27 April 2010, under Results and Conclusions; the sentence begins: This sequence is frequently found in domestic dogs and would be expected to occur
12 ft wing span
DOW-UAP-D174, p. 44, the Wings row of the Bird-like Creature Witness Descriptions sheet, the first of its two accounts; the second gives one wing as the size of a car length and 4 feet wide
Where the case connects
DOW-UAP-D173, the BAASS monthly report for November 2009 and the subject of Release 07 Briefing 8, also covers the Utah ranch: it records a field trip of 16 to 19 November 2009 (pp. 71, 72), and its conclusion says BAASS has started a separate Capella database for the events on the Utah ranch and surrounding areas (p. 155). D174 refers to earlier visits, reports and interviews (pp. 14, 26, 38) but names no earlier report, and neither record cites the other. Both print unboxed, on other pages, the property name that D174 boxes: D174 once, in a sheet’s summary row (p. 43), D173 on pp. 117, 119 and 122. These are release slips, and the name is not repeated here.
DOW-UAP-D175, BAASS’s capability report of 23 November 2010 and the subject of Release 07 Briefing 10, lists a Utah Ranch Database and a Post-Utah Ranch Effects Database among eleven databases (p. 20), and reports a first-level statistical analysis of the Utah Ranch Database looking for patterns in when anomalous activity is reported (p. 21, read from the page image). Whether the database holds D174’s interviews or sheets, neither record says.
Read it yourself
DOW-UAP-D174, “Utah Ranch Investigation Report April 2010”, is hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 07. The abstract and findings are pages 8 to 10 of the PDF, the interviews pages 11 to 29, and the laboratory letter and the BAASS email pages 37 and 38.
Read the file. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
- PURSUE
- Department of War
- Utah Ranch Investigation 2009-2010
- BAASS Monthly Reports 2009
- BAASS Capabilities Report 2010
References and further reading
- DOW-UAP-D174, “Utah Ranch Investigation Report April 2010”, PURSUE Release 07, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 8, on DOW-UAP-D173, the BAASS monthly report for November 2009
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 07 Briefing 10, on DOW-UAP-D175, the BAASS capability report of November 2010