No other country has experienced more UFO encounters than the USA, with more than 12,000 different sightings between 1947 and 1969 alone. The most notorious encounters in Roswell in New Mexico and Area 51 in Nevada have created a worldwide interest in aliens and UFOs and spurred a host of unique attractions across the country.
Read on to see the best intergalactic attractions in the USA. If you're interested in aliens and the cosmos, you'll absolutely love these...
For a close encounter with some of America’s most famous alien attractions, you’ll want to take a voyage along Nevada’s notorious Route 375. The stretch from Alamo to Rachel and on to Tonopah has been christened the Extraterrestrial Highway and takes you past some of the state’s most secret facilities as well, including the notorious Area 51, an air force base so confidential the government didn’t even admit it was real until 2013. Buckle up for a spectacular 98-mile (158km) road trip through the wide-open belly of Nevada, with one eye on the road, the other on the sky.
The San Luis Valley in Colorado has been a hotspot for unexplained ‘sightings’ since the times of the Spanish conquistadors, earning the area the nickname of 'The Bermuda Triangle of the West.' So, what better place to build a makeshift viewing platform to keep watch for little green men. Since opening in May 2000, the tower has been visited by 231 ‘tourists’ from beyond the stars, with owner Judy Messoline saying she’s seen 28 herself. Head north out of Hooper along Highway 17 and follow the signs saying, 'Ride the Cosmic Highway.'
Topped by a flying saucer and a herd of unsuspecting cows, this fun sign on Highway 285, just before the US-70 intersection, announces your arrival at this world-famous town and is a nod to our intergalactic friends’ penchant for abducting cattle. It was only built in 2017 but has quickly become a popular photo stop for tourists heading into Roswell. The sign is best viewed at night when it is illuminated with moving lights that make the spaceship look like it is actually spinning.
With its vast open spaces and minimal light pollution, it should come as no surprise that Utah has the highest concentration of Dark Sky Parks on the planet. There are 26 International Dark-Sky Association-certified locations, all told, including all of Utah’s 'Mighty 5' national parks. This stunning photo was taken in the Arches National Park by ranger JW Frank, underlining the idea that Utah is the perfect place for stargazing. Because of this, the state is also your best chance of spotting an errant intergalactic astro-tourist.
Area 51 is a highly classified US military base in Groom Lake in southern Nevada. It has become synonymous with tales of UFOs, government cover-ups and the testing of alien technology. It is still impossible to get anywhere near the base. Indeed, the military has permission to use deadly force against anyone who tries to breach its perimeter. But if you ask around, you’ll find the unmarked road that leads towards the Groom Lake entrance. And these signs warning you not to go any further. Take a photo. But also take heed.
The numerals in the name may have been flipped, but this experimental entertainment venue just of Las Vegas’ legendary strip leans heavily into the UFO/Alien/Area 51 aesthetic. The New York Times described it as 'an urban Burning Man mall' and, should you decide to visit, you’ll be overwhelmed by live events, immersive activities, epic art installations and a vast choice of bars and eateries. And unlike its secretive, almost-namesake, Area 15 will welcome you into their intergalactic world with open arms.
Don’t let the name fool you. This popular roadside attraction beside the Extraterrestrial Highway in Hiko isn’t conducting autopsies on alien crash victims (that’s happening down the road at Area 51 if the conspiracy theorists are to be believed). It’s actually an alien-themed shop, full of 'out-of-this-world' souvenirs. Gifts to buy include alien-themed hot sauces with the power to fire your tastebuds into outer space.
For a time in September 1965, all that anyone in America was talking about was the ‘Incident at Exeter'. A young lad called Norman Muscarello was walking home through the farmland surrounding this pretty New Hampshire town and saw an unidentified flying object hovering over a barn. The police came and saw it too but what it was has never been explained. The town’s annual UFO festival, held every Labor Day Weekend, marks the mysterious event with colourful alien-themed celebrations as well as serious panel discussions about UFOs and other paranormal activities.
The small unassuming town of Aurora in Texas sits just west of Dallas and is known as the Roswell of the 19th century. On 19 April 1897 a mysterious airship plunged out of the sky, wiped out the local judge’s windmill and crashed into his garden. The pilot died in the crash and the Dallas Morning News reported at the time that the pilot’s 'petite' and 'Martian' body was pulled from the wreckage and buried beside a tree in Aurora cemetery. The original headstone was stolen, but a large rock covered in alien-memorabilia marks the spot today.
This fascinating museum approaches the question of UFOs and aliens and what really happened at the nearby army field during the Roswell Incident in 1947 with an open and questioning mind. It was set up by two Roswell veterans, Walter Haut and Glenn Dennis, and features exhibits on the incident itself as well as crop circles, UFO sightings, Area 51, ancient astronauts and abductions. So, was it a weather balloon that crashed on a ranch outside of Roswell or was it a spaceship? This museum encourages you to make up your own mind.
On 9 December 1965 a fireball streaked across six US states before crashing in a wood just outside Kecksburg in Pennsylvania. The area was quickly sealed off by US military personnel and locals reported seeing them haul away a bronze-coloured acorn-shaped object, roughly the size of a VW Beetle and covered in what appeared to be Egyptian hieroglyphics. In 1990 the producers of Unsolved Mysteries built a replica of the UFO and bestowed it upon the town when they’d finished filming. Today this Space Acorn stand on a hill overlooking the town, a monument to a case UFO enthusiasts still consider unsolved.
As befits a town known all around the world for its close encounters with visitors from other planets, the streetlights of Roswell are topped with alien-shaped globes. The bulbous lamps have slanted eyes and glow green at night and were actually a guerilla art project staged by Larry and Sharon Welz in 2001. They simply painted eyes on the already green streetlights, but the embellishment proved so popular that the local city council voted to leave them that way. Every Memorial Day and Fourth of July the alien streetlights are also decorated with American flags.
This charming Pennsylvanian town describes itself as a small, close-knit community with a touch of cosmic charm. It has certainly lent into its name, with aliens peeking from windows all over town, little green men on the official borough stationery and a 3,000 pound (1,361kg) flying saucer perched in a park in the centre of town. The saucer appeared out of nowhere in the 1990s, alongside an increase in reports of UFOs and crop circles in the area and has remained a popular place to hang out for both locals and tourists alike.
In 2004, Luis and Susana Ramallo decided to combine their two loves – UFOs and jerky. The result is the extraordinary Alien Fresh Jerky, a roadside retail complex that looks like it’s from the set of Star Wars. This place offers UFO enthusiasts and jerky lovers the choice of dozens of alien-themed flavours in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Located in Baker along the I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, the store offers trail mix, BBQ marinades and little UFO trinkets as well. While you're here, get your fortune told by an extraterrestrial in a fortune teller machine.
Little A'Le'Inn is an alien-themed hotel and bar in Rachel, Nevada, the closest town to the notorious air force base, Area 51. It describes itself as Earth’s best landing zone and offers comfortable lodging, camping and pull-thru RV spaces, all with spectacular desert views, as well as hearty food that will fuel your alien-spotting endeavours. Try its ‘World Famous Alien Burger’ garnished with a secret recipe alien sauce. Little A'Le'Inn runs special Area 51 tours that take you right up to the facility’s perimeter and to the infamous Black Mailbox, a sacred meeting place for UFO enthusiasts.
Let’s face it. You’re never going to legally get inside Area 51, the super-secretive US Air Force base at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. But Tikaboo Peak, 26 miles (42km) away in Lincoln County, is probably the next best thing. Make the challenging 40-minute climb on a clear day and you’ll be able to make out a few buildings and a runway from the 7,900 feet tall (2,408m) peak. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a federal Supermax, it’s the closest you’ll ever get to the mysteries within.
Discover the secrets of the world's most beautiful mountains
With the hope of one day sending a manned expedition to Mars, the Mars Society has set up a research centre in the closest thing to the red planet they could find: the bleak, hostile desert near the small town of Hanksville in southern Utah. Here ‘astronauts’ live life as they would in space, treating the atmosphere as if it were deadly. The facility is not open to visitors, but the public are welcome to stop along Cow Dung Road and watch the crews conduct their experiments.
Futuro houses were conceived by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in 1968 primarily to be used as ‘portable’ ski chalets. The space age design was hyped as the house of the future, with 100 built and only 60 surviving. This one sits overlooking Pensacola Beach in Florida and has withstood countless hurricanes and storms, just as its designer intended. Today it houses the headquarters of the Pensacola Beach Preservation and Historical Society, the alien figure waving from a window a nod to both the building’s futuristic design and the famous UFO sighting in nearby Gulf Breeze in 1987.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Pine Bush in New York's Hudson Valley experienced the biggest cluster of UFO reports in history and was quickly dubbed the UFO Capital of the East Coast. There haven’t been too many sightings of late, but that hasn’t stopped the town celebrating its extraterrestrial heritage with the annual Pine Bush UFO Fair, held every June. There’s music and food, of course, as well as a UFO-themed pet costume contest. But the undoubted highlight is the parade which sees aliens of all shapes and sizes proudly strutting down Main Street.
Mount Shasta in northern California is equally mystical and majestic and a reputed UFO hotspot. There have been countless reports of strange lights and crafts darting around its peak, with one chap, Ricardo Gonzalez, claiming he received a telepathic message from a female ET named 'Ivika' to meet him there in September 2016. Most of the sightings can be attributed to the spectacular lenticular clouds that form over the mountain and look very much like the spaceships seen in movies. A local legend insists the clouds are hiding an alien mothership while it visits.
In a town famous around the world for its extraterrestrial encounters, it is only fitting that Roswell is home to the world’s only flying-saucer shaped McDonald’s. Opened in 2005 on a location not that far from the supposed crash site, this fast-food UFO is illuminated at night and shines like space metal in the day. Sadly, its aerodynamic qualities have been compromised to accommodate a playland for younger visitors. But it is suitably space-themed with statues of Ronald McDonald and his mascot pals decked out in space suits.
Meet Clive, a 30-foot (9m) tall alien from the Artalon galaxy. Clive can currently be found leaning out of the Midtown Parking Garage in Covington, Kentucky, taking a great interest in the humanoids passing along the footpath below. No one is quite sure what brings Clive to this part of Kentucky. Well, apart from his creator, artist Marc Phelps, of course. But the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base isn’t too far away. And that’s where the notorious 1940s alien craft that landed in Roswell is supposedly housed.
This unassuming covered bridge in Sheffield, Massachusetts has been permanently closed and the land around it turned into a memorial park in honour of the local Reed family who were supposedly abducted and taken ‘off world’ by large insect-like aliens in 1969. The park was inaugurated in 2015 after former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker signed an official citation recognising the incident as the first 'historically true' UFO encounter in the US. Today, this tranquil corner of Massachusetts is a popular spot for UFO-themed weddings.
Otherworldly and strikingly striated, Devils Tower rises above the prairies and ponderosa pine forests of this part of Wyoming like a rocky sentinel. When Steven Spielberg used it as the location for the climax of his 1977 alien encounter movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, its intergalactic credentials were cemented. It was here, on the tower's flat peak, that humans finally made contact with aliens, communicating through the sound of five basic musical notes. Pass by along Highway 24 and you’ll be compelled to look up and see if they’ve come back to visit us again.
Abandoned and derelict, this UFO-shaped ship was once used as a family home back in 1973. It was built by a man called Richard Ensign who was convinced the world was about to end and hoped that his unusual boat would help them navigate the imminent apocalypse. The family took several voyages in the craft before a big flood in 1996 pushed the boat high up above the vegetation line at Collins Beach, just 10 miles (16km) from downtown Portland and an easy day trip. Take note, however, that the beach it sits beside is clothing-optional.
See eerie images of spectacular shipwrecks
It’s hard to describe just exactly what Coyote's Flying Saucer Retrievals and Repairs in the In-Ko-Pah mountains of California is. Is it an intergalactic junkyard? An outdoor art installation? Or a scary insight into the chaotic mind of its creator, the aforementioned Coyote? It’s probably all three. Drop by as you pass through Jacumba Hot Springs and Coyote will happily drive you around in one of his alien creations. Or invite you to watch the X-Files, projected onto a huge boulder he calls his asteroid.
Another repurposed Futuro House, this spaceship-shaped building now sits on top of the 2001 Odyssey strip club in Tampa. The club’s owner Jerry DeLong was a huge fan of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and decided that the distinctive structure, with its standard shag-pile carpet and wraparound couches would make the perfect VIP lounge for his establishment. It is illuminated each night, often in different colours. Here we see it lit up with red lights to show support to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when they played in the 2021 Super Bowl.
The mysterious lights of Marfa dance across the horizon in this vast empty region near the Mexican border like vivacious globes of red, yellow, blue and white. They appear without warning, no matter the weather conditions, and twinkle, flicker and even split into two before darting off into the desert night. Some say they are ghosts. Others think they are UFOs. Head to the official Marfa Lights Viewing Area just nine miles (14.5km) east of town on US-90 and make up your mind up for yourself.
South Carolina resident Jody Pendarvis built this rickety spaceship beside the road in Bowman to give aliens a place to relax and perhaps use the bathroom in air-conditioned comfort. The structure was cobbled together from scrap wood, metal and random junk and up until recently you’d find Pendarvis kicking back inside. Sadly, the ‘attraction’ is now closed, but it is still easily visible from the road if you want to take a quick snap. What an alien who has been caught short does, however, is anyone’s guess.
The official website for the Integratron describes it as a 'resonant tabernacle and energy machine sited on a powerful geomagnetic vortex'. It was built by George Van Tassel, following instructions given to him by Solganda, the captain of a scout ship from Venus, who told him that Earth’s reliance on metal building materials was disrupting interplanetary 'thought transfers'. The 38-foot tall (11.6m) dome-shaped building was designed to suspend the laws of gravity, extend human life and facilitate high-speed time travel. Today, it is used for sound baths, sonic geometry and concerts by Moby.