Why is there a giant shovel in the desert outside Coachella? Tom Cruise has the answer

INDIO, Calif. — On a quiet neighborhood corner across the street from a local watering hole, a roughly 40-foot shovel towers above the desert. Visible from more than half a mile away, the oversized hand tool sits about 15 minutes from the Coachella festival grounds.

To most, the shovel fits alongside Indio’s large–scale public artworks. Pieces like “Sarbalé Ke,” “Colossal Cacti” and a cactus forming rock music’s most famous hand gesture that once graced the Empire Polo Club have made their way from the Coachella festival grounds to parks across the city. Amid that landscape, a big shovel — perhaps the biggest shovel in the world — feels somewhat ordinary.

To find our answer, we must turn to perhaps the biggest movie star in the world: Tom Cruise.

The actor posted a photo of the giant shovel on X alongside the words “In DIGGER We Trust.”

Cruise, whose cultural capital seems to be as high as it ever has been thanks to the commercial and critical success of recent hits like “Top Gun: Maverick” and the “Mission: Impossible” films, is next set to headline a film called “Digger” from director Alejandro González Iñárritu. In the film’s short teaser, Cruise — donning an Ethan Hunt-esque hair and makeup transformation — moves balletically while carrying a shovel.

Details are scarce on the film, but moviegoers won’t have to guess at the film’s tone. “A comedy of catastrophic proportions” is the movie’s tagline, which calls to mind Cruise’s “Tropic Thunder” character Les Grossman. Whether or not “Digger” will see Cruise bust a move as he did during the 2010 MTV Movie Awards remains to be seen.

How to find the giant “Digger” shovel in Indio?

Finding the shovel is hardly impossible. Start your mission by going to Indio and navigating to the coordinates from Cruise’s post on X: 33.711°N, 116.233°W. Continue west along John Nobles Avenue until you reach Monroe Street. Be on the lookout for a giant shovel. You can’t miss it.