ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ROSWELL, N.M.
SOURCE: New York Times
Trey Hatton, 13, who has seen ``Independence Day'' twice, persuaded his parents to drive 75 miles out of their way on a cross-country vacation to check out evidence that aliens really did crash-land in the New Mexico desert nearly five decades ago.
After visiting the International UFO Museum and Research Center, easily identified by the flying disk above the entrance that looks like a painted satellite dish, Trey said, ``I'm pretty convinced it happened.''
``It'' is the legendary Roswell Incident, the most thoroughly examined UFO case of all time, which figures prominently in the summer's No. 1 hit movie. As any flying-saucer buff knows, aliens in a shiny silver craft supposedly smashed into the mesquite-covered desert in 1947, only to have the military spirit away the bodies. In ``Independence Day,'' their extraterrestrial buddies return 49 years later to invade Earth.
The success of the film, which has grossed more than $240 million since opening July 2, has led thousands of tourists to detour to Roswell, which is 200 miles of sweet nothing from the nearest big city in the state, Albuquerque.
Suddenly, flying-saucer tourism is a growth industry here. There are two UFO museums, a candy company that makes Alien Lollipops that glow in the dark, and guided tours of the crash site. By some estimates, the tourists inject $3 to $5 million a year into Roswell, a community of 50,000 that has depended on ranching, oil and gas.
``Some of the people in the lodging industry estimate a fifth to a fourth of bookings are now related to tourists coming to look at the crash site and the UFO museums,'' said Mayor Thomas Jennings, who shares his office with three stuffed alien dolls.
On Main Street, the ever-expanding UFO Museum and Research Center rambles through several storefronts. Nearly 400 visitors a day examine walls of tabloid news clips, two documentaries and a model of an alien body on a hospital gurney behind a glass wall. For $2.50, visitors can be photographed with ``our little visitor.''
``I was expecting it to be more analytical, less National Enquirer,'' said David Christopher, a high school math teacher from Visalia, Calif. He found it odd that aliens would have dropped in on Roswell, rather than, say, San Francisco. ``Maybe they didn't have AAA,'' he said.
The museum includes several ``private research rooms,'' formerly the changing rooms of a wedding shop. In them, visitors who claim to have been abducted by aliens can be debriefed. ``We're very patient,'' said Glenn Dennis, one of three museum founders. ``We sit and listen. Then they tell you they're from Planet Xeta.''
Dennis, 71, is a living link to the 1947 incident. As a young mortician working at a local funeral home, he got a call from Roswell Army Air Field the day after the crash, he said, asking about ``hermetically sealed'' child-size caskets.
Three days later, July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record ran a story with a headline declaring that the Air Force ``Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.'' Within hours, the military denied the story. Dennis never did send any caskets, he said, nor did he see alien bodies. ``I have a hard time with a lot of this,'' he said. ``I only know what happened to me.''
Most UFO tourists, however, seemed a good deal more credulous. They cited as evidence of a crash-landing and military cover-up the fact that in the past half-century, the government repeatedly has been shown to be deceptive.
The second annual Roswell UFO Encounter last month, held on the July 4 weekend, drew 10,000 visitors. ``We live out in the middle of the desert, and a lot of time life is what you make of it,'' Jennings said. ``We want to have a good time with this.''
Thirty miles north of town, Sheila and Hub Corn are having a good time with it. For $15 a head, they lead visitors to the supposed crash site on their sheep and cattle ranch.
``There are supposed to have been five aliens,'' Sheila Corn, a mother of three in her early 30s, said as she pointed to the impact site midway up a rocky embankment above a dry wash.
``I've had people leave flowers. I've had people cry. I've got a person who wants some dirt from the site, and they sent me $3 to mail it.'' She scooped up a few handfuls of dirt and, once back at her pickup truck, poured it into a plastic sandwich bag.
``We got ribbed a lot by local ranchers when we first started doing this,'' she said. ``Now they wish it was on their ranches.''
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB