Historically A Hot Spot For UFO Sightings In Nevada

Most people have heard of Area 51, the secret military installation in Southern Nevada where the government allegedly warehouses and dissects alien spacecraft captured on Earth. It has become a kind of holy site for those who are interested in UFO events.  But few people know that Ely, Nev., a small mountain town 180 miles north, has experienced a surprising number of curious UFO sightings. Some UFO investigators say Ely is second only to the infamous Roswell, N.M., as a locus of UFO events.

 “The Ely area, and White Pine County, is actually one of the most active UFO areas in the country,” said Jeremy Meador, a Las Vegas resident who investigates UFO sightings. “It’s really a popular UFO hotspot, for some reason.”  Meador has investigated the Ely sightings more extensively than anyone, interviewing dozens of eyewitnesses and visiting crash sites. He’s working on a book about these events.  One sighting in particular has attracted a fair amount of attention, because it allegedly included the recovery of 16 alien beings killed in a crash-landing. That’s a higher body count than any other UFO event anywhere.

It happened in 1952 near the town of Ruth, which lies just east of Ely. The exact date is in dispute. Most online accounts record it as Aug. 12, 1952, although Meador thinks it may have happened in 1953.  According to the accounts, between 9 and 10 pm a UFO crashed into the side of a mining pit at the Robinson copper mine adjacent to Ruth. The crash was witnessed by a number of mine employees, who described a purple, oval-shaped glowing object laying on the embankment. It was intact, not broken up.

The sheriff arrived on the scene, made the workers leave and blocked off the entrance road to the mine. Then the military arrived and removed the UFO on a flatbed truck.  It’s unclear how the account of “16 bodies recovered” originated, because Meador says the UFO did not break up in the crash and no one could see inside because it had no windows. But he interviewed many eyewitnesses to the 66-year-old event, and says their stories are consistent.

Meador claims the government has threatened and intimidated people who attempted to investigate the crash, including himself.  “They did a good job of covering up the story. But now that people are starting to bring it to light again, the military doesn’t like that at all,” he said.  Another UFO incident occurred in the summer of 1964 that is even more curious. According to the reports, a Nevada Northern Railway freight train was headed northbound near the town of Cherry Creek, north of Ely. It had to brake suddenly, because the train tracks were ‘thrown around like pretzels,’ according to the brakeman on the train.

Once they stopped, the train crew realized a UFO had crashed into the tracks and was laying at the base of a mountain a short distance away, flipped upside down. Several local ranchers on horseback were already on the scene.  According to Meador, who interviewed members of the train crew and other witnesses, the alien craft was made of a glass-like material that was silver and translucent, and appeared to be wet or molten. It was partially broken apart by the impact, and at least one witness collected pieces of it. When objects were viewed through that material, they looked greenish-black, like an image seen through night-vision goggles. Most interesting of all, a hole was ripped open in the craft, Meador says, and one of the train crew looked into the hole. He saw four or five bodies inside, brown-colored, and each about three to four feet tall.  As in the 1950s crash, Meador says, the military arrived swiftly and drove everyone away from the site, then loaded the UFO wreckage onto a flatbed truck and took it away.

Meador has explored the area and found what he believes is the crash site. In May 2019, he visited the site again and probed it with a geiger-counter, which picked up higher levels of radiation at the crash site than in the surrounding area.  There are other UFO reports from the area. In July 2015, someone traveling on Highway 93 north of Ely reported their car was followed by a “dark violet-black conical disk” hovering in the air. In November 2012, witnesses saw “two large mother ships” and four smaller craft hovering over Ely, as well as “two beings on the ground”.  

These are just the highlights out of about 20 UFO sightings reported in White Pine County just since 2006, says Sue Countiss, Nevada state director of the Mutual UFO Network, a group that investigates UFO sightings around the world.  The big question, of course, is: Are UFOs real?  “My personal opinion is that there are millions of planets out there similar to Earth,” says Countiss, who lives in Henderson, Nev. “I believe it would be too arrogant to think that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. I believe that not only are we visited, but that they have contact here on the Earth with us.”

 Meador agrees. But why so many UFO sightings in and around Ely? He thinks the area is a magnet for UFOs because there is so much mining activity in the area, past and present.  “I do think they are attracted to that for some reason,” he said. “I do think Ely and Ruth are in a perfect place to see UFOs.”   

For more information:

Ely UFO Crash (Jeremy Meador’s website):  https://elyufocrash.webs.com/

 Mutual UFO Network: https://www.mufon.com/