Depending on your politics, Roswell is either at the cutting edge of 21st century democracy - a place where the saucer freaks of yesterday become the business leaders of tomorrow - or a gathering place for the forces of Lucifer.
Roswell would be just another sleepy Western town were it not for what is known in these parts as "the Roswell Incident." It happened on July 3, 1947 when a ranch foreman named William "Mac" Brazel supposedly discovered a crashed flying saucer, along with several alien bodies. Brazel later retracted his initial story (under the usual suspicious circumstances) and all of the evidence was removed and eventually locked away in Area 51 or the CIA basement or some other supersecret place. The mystery of why this is known as "the Roswell Incident," when it happened 75 miles away near the town of Corona, has never been solved.
UFO crash photo op in the Area 51 Museum.
It is only within the last decade that Roswell has capitalized on its appropriated heritage. Our earlier trips to the town proved disappointing, but a recent visit showed that Roswell has a growing roster of alien attractions, most of them along a small commercial strip around the intersection of US 285 and 380/70 - the heart of downtown. The guy in the Uneek & Anteek store told us that seven new UFO-themed businesses had opened in the last year and a half.
The local Arby's and Wal-Mart feature "Aliens Welcome" signs. Several storefronts feature a saucer crashing into their roofs, including the Crash Down Diner (and its next door neighbor, Starchild), the International UFO Museum, and the Crash Site Cafe - which advertises "the best food in the universe" and "Home of the Flying Saucer" (a hamburger). Most, however, are just gift shops. The streetlights on Main Street have had slanty alien eyes painted on their bulbous globes, and they glow green at night.
Voices tell kid what to think about the crashed UFO replica. - UFO Museum
Countering the tolerant vibes is a group called Alien Resistance, whose logo is a "no" red circle and slash over an alien head, and whose motto is "Every Knee Shall Bow." The group is funded and operated by a group of Christians who believe that the "aliens" that Roswell embraces are in fact biblical demons. Alien Resistance originally had backers on the Chamber of Commerce, but the group's visibility has dwindled as the number of tourists visiting Roswell has increased. Alien business now brings an estimated $5 million a year into local coffers.
Lt. Walter G. Haut -- he was there in 1947. - UFO Museum
Roswell's ground zero is the International UFO Museum And Research Center, which has been on Main St. in an old downtown movie theater since 1997. It has its own motto, "The Truth Is Here." This pertains mostly to the crashed aliens, although the Museum has other exhibits on crop circles, ancient cultures, Area 51, etc. This place has a long way to go to do justice to its futuriffic subject matter, with exhibits that are mostly paper displays hung on pegboard walls, and flying saucers made out of hubcaps hanging from the ceiling.
Its star attraction is a prop alien corpse dummy, lying on a hospital gurney, from the 1994 Showtime movie "Roswell: The UFO Coverup." And the folks at the Museum are very excited about a new exhibit, a replica of the Mayan sarcophagus lid found in Palenque, Mexico, that supposedly shows a man blasting off in a spaceship.
Our guide, Dave Swink, told us that aliens come to Earth "through the 4th dimension" and that "103 churches" have united to oppose the Museum, as its acknowledgement of aliens implies that humans are not the apex of God's creation. We were fortunate to meet Lt. Walter G. Haut, one of the founders of the Museum, a member of The New Mexico Department of Tourism Hall of Fame, and the PR officer who wrote the first press release about the saucer crash - which was immediately retracted. We had him pose with a model of the Roswell saucer that The Franklin Mint had planned to mass produce in 2003, but which, like the original, has since mysteriously disappeared.
Back yard scene at the Area 51 Zone.
The best attraction in Roswell is the Area 51 Museum at the Alien Zone & Cosmic Juke Box, a block away from the UFO Museum. For a mere two bucks you get to pose for photos with dummy aliens in your choice of around twenty hand-made dioramas. (An identical dummy alien keeps Bob Tohak company at his UFO Landing Port in Green Bay, Wisconsin -- it's obviously a standard issue.) Area 51 has a crashed saucer scene, an alien bar, and an upside-down room, but our favorite was the "alien autopsy" diorama, complete with bloody plastic meat cleavers that you can hold aloft.
Black light moods in the City of the Future - Area 51 Zone
The Museum ends with the "City of the Future," a miniature model of a sci-fi cityscape illuminated with black light paint. The woman behind the counter, Elsie Reeves, told us, "My husband Randy built all of that with a disabled man. He's proud of it."
According to Alien Resistance, the Alien Zone is owned and operated by a local Christian pastor (in fact, both of the Reeves are pastors), which is a particularly grievous offense in their eyes. The Reeves shrug it off as a matter of opinion, not doctrine.
For them, as for the rest of Roswell, the space people and the saved people have learned to live together in cosmic-commercial harmony.
July 2007: A series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash
were held in Roswell. Over 35,000 saucerheads and others showed up for the
festival. The unexpectedly high attendance may help efforts to get a proposed
Alien Theme Park built in Roswell.
