Amidst the dusty southwestern plains of New Mexico lies the city of Roswell, NM – home to roughly 50,000 residents, not all of them aliens.
In the 1850s the area within the Pecos Valley was settled by Mexican farmers with the first non-indigenous and non-Hispanic settlers arriving from Missouri around 1965, setting up shop in an area 15 miles southwest of what would eventually become Roswell. Known as Missouri Plaza the site was abandoned shortly after its establishment due to a lack of water. In 1869, businessman Van C. Smith and his partner Aaron Wilburn constructed the first permanent structures in the form of 2 adobe buildings which would later become a general store and post office. In 1890 the discovery of a major aquifer allowed for the town’s first major growth spurt, continuing even more when the railroad can in 1893.
During World War II the town played host to German prisoners of war, who were brought in from the nearby Orchard Park POW camp to do major infrastructure work. Not long after the war (in 1947) the town played host to visitors of another sort, although whether or not those visitors were from another world or were more of the “weather balloon” variety is up for debate depending on who you ask.
At any rate, it’s safe to say that Roswell wouldn’t be the tourist attraction it is today if it weren’t for the events surrounding the Roswell crash in 1947. The official story (as per 2 reports published by the US military in the 1990s) is that it was a US Army Air Forces high-altitude balloon, tasked with monitoring Soviet atomic bomb tests via a network of seismic detectors and equipment for taking air samples in order to measure any fallout. The operation was referred to as Project Mogul, and while it’s likely that the real story is that one of these top secret balloons with odd looking equipment was what actually crashed in the New Mexico Desert, the subsequent bungling of and covering up of information regarding it is what seems to have inflated claims that it was actually an alien space craft.
On July 8th, 1947 Walter Haut, public information officer with the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release that personnel from the RAAF’s 509th Operations Group recovered what they described as a “flying disc” from a crash site on a ranch near Roswell. This press release was later backtracked by the military who claimed that it was a weather balloon. A press conference was held showing debris that matched up with the description of a weather balloon. And that was that, for 30 years the story held and interest waned until the late 70s when UFO researchers like Stanton T. Friedman, William Moore, Karl T. Pflock, Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt ran a series of interviews with a few hundred people who claimed to have a connection with the events at Roswell. Coupled with some redacted documents gained via the Freedom of Information Act and supposed leaks from individuals with insider information led people to conclude that there was in fact an alien crash, a government cover-up, and even that there were alien bodies recovered from the crash site.
Years went by and a number of books, articles, television specials, and movies moved the events from the fringes of public awareness into the mainstream, with the incidents becoming part of not only pop culture but a symbol for some of government conspiracy and cover-ups.
Today, you can visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, but of course that isn’t all there is to do there. Roswell may owe at least some of its growth over the past 30 or so years to interest in alien phenomena but despite that there is a lot more to this Southwestern city than the extra terrestrial. Roswell also hosts a rather robust art scene, with both the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art and the Roswell Museum and Art Center. Nature lovers will also find something for them with attractions such as the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, the Spring River Park and Zoo, and Bottomless Lakes State Park.
There is definitely more to Roswell than what first appears, whether you believe in aliens or not, so if you have some time and happen to be near Chaves County, you may find something that you didn’t know you were looking for. Who knows, that something might find you.