Roswell's Legacy: How a Town Became UFO Central (Part 1)

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Roswell's Legacy: How a Town Became UFO Central (Part 1)
July 1,2010
Lee Spiegel
AOL News


Sixty-three years ago, something fell out of the sky near Roswell, N.M., launching decades of speculation about the true nature of the object.

Was it an extraterrestrial spacecraft that crashed in 1947, killing its alien occupants, or -- as the military originally claimed -- nothing more than a weather balloon?

"It wasn't a weather balloon. I could swear on the biggest Bible there is. It wasn't a missile, it wasn't any part of any kind of aircraft that we know," said Maj. Jesse Marcel, who served as intelligence officer at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) in 1947.


But enough people favor the alien spaceship theory to warrant a huge annual festival this weekend, as Roswell -- or, if you will, UFO central -- celebrates the 63rd anniversary of the event that turned the 50,000-resident town into a global UFO culture destination.

In addition to the expected roster of lectures given by UFO researchers and authors, Roswell expects tens of thousands of people from around the world to merge with the town for an "Aliens In Cinema" parade, alien costume contests, music and dance performances, art exhibits, and -- of course -- 4th of July fireworks.

The celebrations began in 1997 with the 50th anniversary marking the event of whatever the object was that crashed there. "People started to look at us as more of an alien city, as an attachment to that unexplained phenomenon," Roswell Mayor Del Jurney told AOL News.

"It's a great opportunity to bring people to Roswell, to show who we are as a community. It's what identifies Roswell a little bit different than most any other community in the nation."
UFO and Alien Encounters?

Eric Draper, AP11 photos
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
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UFO and Alien Encounters?
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
Eric Draper, AP
Eric Draper, AP

There are about as many different opinions about the Roswell incident as there are stars in the sky, but there's at least one thing that nearly everybody -- believers and skeptics, alike -- agrees on: In early July 1947, an object smashed into a ranch outside of Roswell, scattering debris across a large area.

After Marcel investigated the incident, an official press release was issued on July 8, 1947, with the headline: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region."

Naturally, media interest ran high as reporters clamored for more details about this amazing discovery. The next day, military officials deflated the flying saucer story, claiming instead that the debris was simply pieces of a fallen weather balloon.

After a famous photograph, transmitted around the world, showed Marcel posing with the alleged balloon debris, the alien ship story quickly died.

Three decades passed before former nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman spoke with Marcel, who opened the UFO Pandora's Box, when he speculated that the 1947 "weather balloon" was not manufactured on Earth.

Friedman began to investigate the events surrounding Roswell.

"I followed up enough to find a number of key people, and with no Internet available, it took a lot of work," he said.

At the time, in 1979, I was producing nightly UFO reports for NBC Radio in New York, when Friedman put me in touch with Roswell participants who were finally willing to supply other pieces to the long-forgotten flying saucer/weather balloon puzzle.


UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, AFP / Getty Images
Maj. Jesse Marcel from the Roswell Army Air Field is pictured with debris found northwest of Roswell, N.M., in July 1947.
Marcel, who had been in charge of intelligence and security for the Roswell base in 1947, told me his commanding officer ordered him to check out the reported debris left by whatever it was that came from the sky.

"We started picking up the debris, loaded as much of it as we could into a pickup truck and I filled up my car with the stuff, as well," he said. "It's almost indescribable -- it's not the kind of material I'd ever seen in my life, nor have I seen it since.

"There were various types of materials, I couldn't identify any of it. Some of it looked like it was made of wood, yet it was not wood. It was flexible, but it wouldn't even burn.

"Some of the debris looked like a form of parchment and it had unknown symbols of some kind on it.

"What amazed me most of all was the weightlessness of all this material -- it weighed nothing!"

It never occurred to Marcel that he was retrieving pieces of a downed weather balloon, because of how much debris there was.

"We only picked up one small fraction of what was out there -- it was scattered over such a wide area, about three-quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. So, we were busy all day long, picking up this stuff."

On his way back to the base, Marcel stopped at home to show his wife and 11-year-old son some of the debris. He said they were all startled at how some of the very thin, tin foil-like material couldn't be dented or broken.

"There were these I-beams about 12 to 18 inches long, and the most unusual part of that was the symbols or writing on the inner surface," Marcel's son, Jesse Marcel Jr., a retired Army National Guard flight surgeon, told me years later.

"I thought, at first, it was like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but when I looked closer, it seemed more like geometric symbols of some kind -- it was very strange."

After Marcel Sr. brought the unusual material to the Roswell base, Col. William Blanchard ordered the base press officer, 1st Lt. Walter Haut, to issue a press release indicating that the military had recovered something unusual.

"Col. Blanchard called me and said, 'We found something west of Roswell, we don't know what it is, but you ought to put out a release on it so that we don't get caught with our pants down," Haut told me in 1979.

That resulted in the infamous crashed flying saucer headline seen around the world.

After issuing the press release, officials ordered a B-29 flight crew to transport the debris to Carswell Air Base in Fort Worth, Texas. Flight engineer Robert Porter said the crew wasn't told anything about the strange cargo they loaded into the plane.

"I handled it, lifting it up into the hatch of the B-29, but we didn't know what it was -- it was all wrapped in brown paper packages. There were several pieces, including one that was triangular shaped, about 2 ½ by 3 feet, and at first I thought the package was empty because it had no weight to it at all, like it had nothing in it.

"I was up in the plane and I reached down to lift it, thinking it would weigh something, and it was just real light."

When Marcel arrived at Carswell Air Base, he met with Gen. Roger Raimy. "He told me, 'Don't open your mouth to the press,' which I wasn't about to do, anyway. He said I should put some stuff on the floor and let the press take a picture of it, and I was careful not to put anything there that showed any detail on it."

According to Marcel, after he returned to Roswell, the press was allowed to photograph (at the Carswell base) what he described as "a mock display of the debris. They used a battered weather balloon, and they let the press take pictures of that. So you see, the whole thing was a cover-up to begin with."

Whether it was an ET spaceship that somehow lost its way or a high-altitude military weather instrument, it became the symbol for the whole idea of UFO cover-ups -- not to mention a cause for celebration for a small desert town.