The UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell, NM.

The UFO Museum and Research Center (no, it’s not just your average tourist trap, this place does some legitimate science!), along with all the other UFO-related crap that makes up Roswell New Mexico, is an attempt by a small-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere to capitalize on the mania surrounding the claims of a flying saucer crash in 1947.  Yes indeed, little green (or rather, gray) men from outer space traveled many light years through the galaxy but somehow managed to crash into the desert just as they were about to reach their destination and you can find out all the juicy details at the UFO Museum.

Nobody knows exactly why the saucer crashed but many theories have surfaced including female aliens at the helm “freshening up” their faces in the rear-view mirror, distraction by an intergalactic cell phone call and (perhaps the most plausible) the aliens believing there would be another gas station just up the road a bit (if you’ve ever driven through New Mexico, you can understand their mistake).  There are other theories but if you’ve got a better one, hey, leave it in the comment box below!

Flash forward half a century and little green men are the biggest industry in town.  There’s a UFO festival and the whole town seems to be trying to get their share of the tourists’ money.  The little green man seems to be everywhere!

Roswell is 200 plus miles from any large city including Amarillo, Lubbock and El Paso, Texas, Albuquerque, NM and Las Cruces, NM. A majority of our visitors make a point to come to Roswell to see the museum and be in the city where the best known UFO crash and cover-up occurred. While in Roswell, they in the least buy gas and a soda or they may spend a week learning about the phenomena and Roswell.

The UFO Museum itself starts out with a map of the world where you can place a pin on your hometown.  Next up, various World War II-era black and white photographs of people and airplanes.  But, things start getting good when we get to the room of war-surplus equipment with a model of the flying saucer crash site (think model train layout and a paper plate painted silver).  Naturally, we get to the part of “The Great Cover Up” where we learn how the evil government is hiding all this wonderful technology from us because we just can’t handle the truth.  Then, there’s an entire room full of proof (no, not physical evidence, newspaper clippings!) aliens exist including crop circles, Area 51, etc.  Finally, there’s the big finale:  an ACTUAL alien autopsy mockup!  It doesn’t get any better than this.  No, really, it doesn’t get any better; that’s about all there is to this place.

Now, you’d think the gift shop would be world-class (can you say “My dad was abducted by an Alien in Roswell and I all I got was this stupid T-shirt” T-shirt?) but their stuff is mostly quite unimaginative.  It’s mostly your run-of-the-mill stuff (hats, coffee mugs, key chains, etc.) with “Roswell” and/or the classic alien head printed on it.  However, there is a rather clever T-shirt along the lines of “born to ride.”

Whether you believe in flying saucers or not, a trip to Roswell and the UFO Museum and Research Center is fun and campy.  Be sure to check out their plans for a new museum—it looks like a cross between Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Disneyland’s Space Mountain!

UFO Museum and Research Center