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UFO Tourism is Boom in Roswell NM
Newspaper: Minneapolis Star Tribune, 18 Aug 1996, pg. 07A.
Formatted By CammoDude
04-11-00

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Trey Hatton, 13, who has seen "Independence Day" twice, persuaded his parents to drive 75 miles out of their way on a cross-country vacation to check out evidence that aliens really did crash-land in the New Mexico desert nearly five decades ago.

After visiting the International UFO Museum and Research Center, easily identified by the flying disk above the entrance that looks like a painted satellite dish, Trey said, "I'm pretty convinced it happened."

"It" is the legendary Roswell Incident, the most thoroughly examined UFO case of all time, which figures prominently in the summer's No. 1 hit movie. As any flying-saucer buff knows, aliens in a shiny silver craft supposedly smashed into the mesquite-covered desert in 1947, only to have the military spirit away the bodies. In "Independence Day," their extraterrestrial buddies have returned 49 years later to mount an invasion of Earth.

The success of the film has led thousands of tourists to detour to Roswell, which is 200 miles of sweet nothing from the nearest big city in the state, Albuquerque.

Suddenly, flying-saucer tourism is a growth industry there. There are two UFO museums, a candy company that makes Alien Lollipops that glow in the dark and guided tours of the crash site. By some estimates, the tourists inject $3 million to $5 million a year into Roswell, a community of 50,000 that has depended on ranching, oil and gas.

"Some of the people in the lodging industry estimate a fifth to a fourth of bookings are now related to tourists coming to look at the crash site and the UFO museums," said Mayor Thomas Jennings, who shares his office with three stuffed alien dolls.

'Our little visitor'

On Main Street, the ever-expanding UFO Museum and Research Center rambles through several storefronts. Nearly 400 visitors a day examine walls of tabloid newsclips, two documentaries and a model of an alien body on a hospital gurney behind a glass wall. For $2.50, visitors can be photographed with "our little visitor."

"I was expecting it to be more analytical, less National Enquirer," said David Christopher, a high school math teacher from Visalia, Calif. He found it odd that aliens would have dropped in on Roswell, rather than, say, San Francisco. "Maybe they didn't have AAA," he said.

The museum includes several "private research rooms," formerly the changing rooms of a wedding shop. In them, visitors who claim to have been abducted by aliens can be debriefed. "We're very patient," said Glenn Dennis, one of three museum founders. "We sit and listen. Then they tell you they're from Planet Xeta."

Dennis, 71, is a living link to the 1947 incident. As a young mortician working at a local funeral home, he got a call from the Roswell Army Air Field the day after the crash, he said, asking about "hermetically sealed" child-size caskets.

Three days later, July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record ran a story with a headline declaring that the Air Force "Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." Within hours, the military denied the story. Dennis never did send any caskets, he said, nor did he see alien bodies. "I have a hard time with a lot of this," he said. "I only know what happened to me."

Most UFO tourists, however, seemed a good deal more credulous. They cited as evidence of a crash-landing and military cover-up the fact that in the past half-century, the government repeatedly has been shown to be deceptive. Rep. Steven Schiff, R-N.M., asked for a full investigation in 1994. A 3-inch-thick report issued by the Air Force concluded that the debris found in the desert was a high-altitude balloon, sensors and radar reflectors that were part of a once-secret spy project to detect Russian atomic tests. The report also conceded that records from the Roswell military base from 1946 to 1950 were unaccounted for.

"I don't believe any of the report," said J.D. Roehrig, an artist visiting the museum, who said his mistrust of the federal government stemmed from his 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam.

Barbara Baynard of St. Petersburg Fla., recalled the scene in "Independence Day" when the president learns the military has kept three dead aliens pickled at an underground site for decades. "It wasn't hard to believe the president didn't know about it," she said.

This strain of anti-government feeling, long a shadowy feature of American culture, has spread to the mainstream lately in the form of hit television shows about the paranormal, such as "The X-Files" and "Unsolved Mysteries." Both refer regularly to Roswell.

Stan Crosby, a fourth-generation Roswell resident, decided to capitalize on the notoriety a few years ago with a UFO convention. Initially, he got a cold shoulder from city leaders, who said they did not want the town of about 44,000 known as "kook city," Crosby recalled.

But in 1994 a newly elected mayor, Jennings, told Crosby to give it a try.

The city kicked in $3,500 for promotion. Crosby's second annual Roswell UFO Encounter last month, held on the July 4 weekend, drew 10,000 visitors.

"We live out in the middle of the desert and a lot of time life is what you make of it," Jennings said.

"We want to have a good time with this."

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