Seeking Aliens on the Extraterrestrial Highway

Aliens led Pat Travis to this tiny desert outpost along the lonely Extraterrestrial Highway. She says she’s even seen some, though they were in the form of tourists.

Here at the Little A’Le’Inn bar, cafe and motel, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, Travis’ story is not only believed, it’s welcomed.

“I’ve had people tell me they’ve been abducted in one of my rooms,” the owner says, pouring a glass of orange juice for a customer. “I watched a craft for 20 minutes one night.”

The 65 residents and the many tourists who have found their way to this oddity of a town near the Area 51 military base on the dry Groom Lake bed say they’ve seen UFOs, aliens and otherworldly occurrences.

Beams of light? Resident Charles Clark has seen them. Orange glows? Yep, someone’s seen them too. Little green men? Not yet, but the night is still young.

Locals and visitors--even those not of this world--find a rhythm here in a quaint, friendly place where tall tales are swapped over cold beers and $3.75 alien burgers.

“You can talk about aliens. You can talk about abductions,” Travis says. “It makes it a totally different place.”

Residents say the UFO talk began years ago when a Nevada Test Site worker claimed that he saw alien ships at nearby Area 51, the supersecret base whose existence the military only recently acknowledged.

Word got around, and the stories haven’t stopped. Even the state got in on the UFO lore, officially naming a 98-mile stretch of Nevada Route 375 the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996 and erecting green highway signs with images of spaceships.

About 150 miles north of Las Vegas, across miles of empty desert speckled with Joshua trees and sagebrush, Rachel is the only town along the alien highway.

It’s really just a collection of trailers resting on gravel near the mountain backdrop, but the Little A’Le’Inn beckons curious and thirsty tourists from the monotonous drive.

“Welcome earthlings and/or aliens. Please specify planet,” reads a sign on the white trailer with faded blue trim.

Here, cows have the right of way and the residents seem a bit more peculiar than most folks.

There’s Clark, an astrophotographer whose idea of a good time is to drive to the boundary of Area 51 and pester the guards.

“The majority of people who have lived here at one point or another have seen things that are beyond explanation,” he says, taking his seat at the bar.

And then there’s Travis, a former Las Vegas casino cook who moved to Rachel 14 years ago from Las Vegas with her husband, Joe, to take over the town’s only bar. “You gotta be nuts,” friends told the couple.

They remodeled the trailer and called it the Little A’Le’Inn. Along with serving homemade meals, the couple filled the bar with flying saucer pictures and alien souvenirs: key chains, shot glasses, bumper stickers, Area 51 fake ID cards, alien slime in a tube, gooey aliens in a jar.

“Every business needs a gimmick,” she likes to say.

It turned out to be just what tourists wanted. They come from all over, enduring hours of highway boredom to sample a most unusual world where strangers are always welcome. Even military personnel working on the nearby ranges stop by, but they rarely say much.

Some of the patrons entertain the idea of extraterrestrial visitors. “I think it’s a possibility,” tourist George Zoukee of Newbury, N.H., says of UFO sightings. “Even if it isn’t, it’s a little fun.”

Grover Shegrud of Seattle shuffles in the back of the cafe, sorting through Area 51 T-shirts. He hasn’t had much luck witnessing the paranormal. “Just dust devils,” he mumbles.

Besides the Little A’Le’Inn, tourists usually make their way to the border of Area 51, which consists of a no-trespassing sign, a surveillance camera and an armed guard on a hill. UFO and conspiracy enthusiasts believe alien technology is hidden at the remote base, about 20 miles southwest of Rachel.

Then there’s the black mailbox, which is actually white. It’s a rancher’s mailbox along the highway that has become a landmark to stop and see Area 51 from afar. It was repainted years ago, but it’s still called the black mailbox around these parts.

The front door of the Little A’Le’Inn swings open again and Bonny Barry, Rachel’s newest resident, enters. She moved here two weeks ago to work at the cafe, making her resident No. 65.

“I’m not egotistical enough as to think that God would only create us,” she says.

A few tourists nod.

Travis, 58, says she’s met three aliens in her bar, though she didn’t know it until later. They were tourists, and one left a note: “I am not of your world.”

“How can we say things like this don’t happen?” she asks.

A few more guests trickle in, but by 10 p.m. residents have returned to their trailers and visitors to their travels or their rooms. The Little A’Le’Inn closes as the darkness of the desert sky descends.