UFO's and Cowboys

We’ve been zigzagging our way across the South West over the past few days and yesterday headed out to Roswell to see what all the fuss was about and to try and decipher the rumours for ourselves.

First impressions are that it looks like any other typical American town, it’s only when you start seeing giant alien figurines outside the car dealerships and billboards advertising the world’s only UFO themed McDonald’s that you realise where you are. When you pull on to Main Street it is clear that Roswell has fully embraced the events of the incident in 1947 (which actually happened 75 miles away nearer a town called Corona) to reel in a steady stream of tourists. The street is littered with various UFO and Alien themed gift shops, which truth be told are pretty run down and tacky.

There are only two attractions really worth any time in Roswell. The first was a shop-cum-exhibit that takes the whole alien existence theory firmly tongue in cheek and features various extra-terrestrial set pieces that you can pose with. This is where the photos uploaded yesterday evening come from. The second is the official UFO museum which takes the whole incident far more seriously and is devoted to exploring the truth about the alleged UFO that crashed near Roswell in July, 1947. It houses literally hundreds of various official documents, eye-witness accounts and news reports arranged in chronological order. The museum invites visitors to take in all the available information, including the varying Government cover stories, and make up their own mind about what happened that night.

I have to say the exhibit succeeds in remaining mostly impartial and allows you to come to your own conclusions. I also must confess that if all the evidence on display is real and not forged then it is hard to come to any other conclusion other than that something not of this earth crashed at that farm and the Government went to great lengths to cover it up. The most incriminating piece of evidence is a report published in 1997 by the US Air Force intended to close the case once and for all that attempted to claim the event never happened in 1947 but actually took place in 1957. This allowed them to come up with an excuse for the bodies many witnesses saw at, or taken from the site, as crash test dummies used in Air Force test flights which were never used until post 1947. The report really just insults the public’s intelligence since original newspaper copies reporting the incident are available in plain sight at the exhibit clearly dated July, 8th, 1947.

I guess at the end of the day we will never know the truth but it is within the town’s best interests to keep the controversy alive otherwise their tourist industry will surely die.

Today we rose early and left the hotel by 7 A.M as we had a drive that Google Maps lists as 475 miles, or over half way from John O’groats to Lands End. We were staying in Tucson, Arizona but wanted to get to an old preserved Western mining town, called Tombstone, and spend the afternoon their before heading to our hotel.

Thanks to the excellent US road system, no traffic and gaining an extra hour as we drove between time zones; we arrived in Tombstone at 12.45 PM! As another example of how cheap things are here (or perhaps how expensive it is in England). We stopped once to fill up three quarters of a tank of petrol (44 Litres), buy a litre bottle of water, a tuna sandwich, a rice crispies cake, an ice cream and a chocolate bar for a grand total of...$36.50 or £22.45. Yes £22.45! For 44 litres of petrol, a sandwich, two snacks, an ice cream and bottled water. It would cost nearly 3 times that amount at home.

Tombstone was well worth getting up early to make the drive. The town is in much the same condition it was in the 1880’s and is seeping with history. It was the location for the gun fight at the OK Corrall, which is generally considered the most famous gunfight of the old West. The whole town itself is probably the best modern example of what it was like to be alive in the Wild West and you can even see bullet holes in the walls of the famous Birdcage Theatre. We explored the main historic district of the town and took a tour of the Birdcage Theatre, picked up a replica newspaper reporting the gunfight on October 26th, 1881 and even caught a 45 minute show re-enacting the shootout. To find out more about Tombstone and its famous history click here.