Undeniably Funky Objects

This city sits on the sunbaked southeastern plains of New Mexico like a ship afloat in an ocean of grass. At the edge of town, gently undulating ridges stretch to a horizon unrelieved by any distinguishing feature, save the distant blue silhouette of the Capitan Mountains.

As Mayor Tom Jennings says, “We’re out here 200 miles from anywhere.”

But during the first week of July, as many as 50,000 visitors will descend, braving a drive most often described as endless to mark the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident. They can expect to endure 100-degree temperatures, rattlesnakes and violent thunderstorms.

They will also spend a lot of money.

Oh, and they’ll be looking for aliens.

You see them almost everywhere you look in Roswell these days. Gray-skinned, big-headed, almond-eyed humanoids with four digits on each hand. They line the storefronts along Main Street. In the window of the Pampered Lady, a block from the green-domed county courthouse, a couple of mannequins with alien faces even model ball gowns.

It all dates from July 1947, when a flurry of reports about the crash of a flying saucer on a ranch outside town made it onto the front pages of newspapers around the country. But the story was debunked within days when the Air Force said the wreckage was only a weather balloon. Locals forgot about the whole thing until the early 1980s, when interest was revived with a series of books and articles alleging that the military had covered up an alien visitation.

The Air Force continues to deny there was a saucer crash, and just this week issued a report titled “The Roswell Incident, Case Closed.” Three years ago, officials asserted that the alleged saucer debris / weather balloon had really come from a highly classified attempt to snoop on early Russian atomic testing using high-altitude balloons. The latest report adds that “alien” bodies alleged to have been removed from the debris were actually “anthropomorphic test dummies” used in high-altitude test projects from 1954-’59. The Air Force did not explain how or why people might have confused events that happened several years apart.

Never mind. Showtime turned the story into a made-for-cable movie. Fox Mulder is a believer. The Roswell incident even was a key plot device in the 1996 movie blockbuster “Independence Day.”

And now, as the half-century anniversary approaches, folks around here have discovered that aliens are good for business.

Ask Stan Crosby, a prosperous oil-and-gas man and a fourth generation Roswellian who has organized the Roswell UFO Encounter ‘97, a lavish six-day commemoration of the alleged crash.

He is a flying saucer skeptic, but like many of his neighbors, Crosby is a true believer in economic development. “They tell me, ‘Boy, what you’re doing, Stan, is real great for the community, but I don’t personally believe in UFOs,’ ” Crosby says. “There is still that kook factor associated with it.”

That hasn’t kept people from making plans to visit between Tuesday and July 6. Roswell’s 954 motel and hotel rooms have been booked for months, as they have in towns throughout southeastern New Mexico. Organizers have arranged for portable toilets, extra RV parking and new campsites to accommodate the anticipated flood of visitors. The hospital has laid in extra snake antivenin, while vacation leave for police and emergency medical technicians has been canceled.

This year’s celebration will include a major conference of UFO researchers, an expo, an alien costume contest, a glow-in-the-dark golf tournament, an Alien Chase fun run and an 80-mile bike race. Other events include crash site tours, a film festival, a play about a purported biblical UFO encounter, a laser show at the planetarium, and the Crash and Burn Extravaganza, in which contestants build and race spaceship-shaped go-carts.

Tourists will have their pick of a host of extraterrestrial tchotchkes, including assorted T-shirts, Roswell UFO incident mini-cookies (they’re “Out of this world!”), Alien Head lollipops, silver-on-black Roswell incident fabric, and alien dolls.

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Given the enthusiasm with which Roswell’s businesses have embraced the anniversary, it’s surprising that until a few years ago, the city didn’t care to be associated with flying saucers. A stronghold of Bible Belt values, it preferred to be known as a center for agribusiness and energy production--and as the home of the New Mexico Military Institute.

But Roswell, whose 48,000 residents make it New Mexico’s fourth-largest city, also suffered from an acute inferiority complex when it came to tourism. It lacks the adobe chic of Santa Fe or the boomtown vitality of Albuquerque. Mostly, tourists pass through as they head south on U.S. 285 to visit Carlsbad Caverns.

So when Crosby saw the Showtime feature “Roswell”--which first aired in August of ‘94--he was miffed to see that the film, actually shot in Bisbee, Ariz., showed nonexistent mountains looming above the city. But when he approached then-Mayor William Brainerd about trying to organize an anniversary celebration, “He said naw, he didn’t want Roswell to get a reputation as a kook city,” Crosby says.

Jennings replaced Brainerd in 1994, opening the door for Crosby and other business people to mount the first celebration in 1995. Last year’s event drew some 12,000 people, including a few “Star Trek” devotees who wandered about in the stifling midday heat wearing long-sleeved Star Fleet uniforms.

This year could see the biggest tourism event in the city’s history, and Crosby couldn’t be happier. “We were always a drive-through point,” he says. “Now we’re a destination point. The eventual goal is that Roswell will create its own tourist industry.”

A pivotal player in Roswell’s coming to terms with its alien alter ego has been the International UFO Museum and Research Center, administered by Crosby’s wife, Deon. Since it was founded in 1992, nearly 200,000 people have viewed exhibits tracing the timeline of the alleged crash and its aftermath.

The museum, which recently relocated to the old Plains movie theater on Main Street, is readily identified by the flying saucer embedded in the wall above the sidewalk. Although admission is free, there are plenty of places to spend money, including the Alien Caffeine Espresso Bar and the gift shop, stuffed with Roswell incident books, videos, key chains, refrigerator magnets and the like.

Court Gregory of Miami strokes his chin pensively as he studies an exhibit of documents purporting to prove the existence of a top-secret Majestic 12 group convened at the highest levels of government to deal with the extraterrestrial wreckage. “It seems like such a big deal,” Gregory says. “I don’t know why [those who believe in flying saucers] would make this whole story up. It’s a lot of work for somebody to go through.”

Gregory says he and his wife were returning home from a cross-country trip when they decided to visit Roswell. “We were in the area and figured, what the heck.”

Upstairs, Deon Crosby sits behind a desk furnished with alien bookends and expounds on the museum’s philosophy. “We don’t preach UFOs here,” she says. “We basically lay the facts out and give you information the board of directors believes is credible. We let you make up your mind.”

Across the street from the museum, another crash-landed saucer (this one on a roof) advertises Star Child, a business devoted to alien paraphernalia. Owner Randhi Hesse says business has been “absolutely unreal” since she opened her doors April 12.

Although Hesse says most of her customers are “family oriented and friendly,” she also has been visited by fundamentalists who denounce belief in extraterrestrials as evil, as well as some “kooky” true believers. “Then there are those that are so serious, so skeptical, and want some proof,” she says. “Well, there is no ‘proof’ here in Roswell.”

Over at City Hall, Jennings, the scion of an old ranching family, has decorated his office with alien dolls, framed newspaper and magazine stories on the Roswell incident and, in one corner, the gray alien costume he sometimes wears when he represents the city at national conventions.

The watermark on Jennings’ stationery shows a lariat shaped suspiciously like a flying saucer. The city’s new flag includes an ambiguous glowing dot in the heavens that could be taken to represent a UFO. He chatted with President Clinton about the Roswell incident at the inaugural earlier this year.

“We’ve been working in earnest for three years to get to this point,” Jennings says in his easy drawl. “We’re riding the big kahuna, I guess.”

Does Jennings think anything unearthly really happened in 1947?

“I don’t know if it happened or not,” Jennings shrugs. “We’re taking advantage of it.”