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Newspaper: USA TODAY Date: 02-18-96
RACHEL, Nev. - If E.T. is ever looking for a place to phone home, or searching for a route back to his extraterrestrial kin, this tiny blip of a town may be just the ticket.
Long the mecca for sci-fi faithful who believe that we are not alone, Rachel is now the anchor for Nevada's newest attraction: the Extraterrestrial Highway.
Folks here are convinced visitors from outer space live just over the mountains to the south, at a top-secret government base known as Area 51 or Groom Lake.
"There are people and machines from other planets over there," Pat Travis said as she scrubbed breakfast dishes at the Little A'Le'Inn - a play on the word alien - the focal point of this town of 100. "I think our government is working in conjunction with them."
"I don't doubt for a minute that there are extraterrestrials," said Chuck Clark, an amateur astronomer who moved here 1 years ago and has written a guidebook on the area. "To think we're the only life in the universe is ludicrous."
Area 51 is steeped in mystery. Here the government has tested exotic aircraft, including the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117A Stealth fighter and now the top-secret Aurora, said to be the succesor to the high-flying Blackbird reconnaissance plane.
The military has refused to acknowledge the existence of a base in the heavily guarded area 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
UFO buffs say an alien found in the crash of a spaceship near Roswell, N.M., on July 8, 1947, was taken to Area 51. The Nevada Department of Transportation, mindful of the growing interest in this remote area, recently named the 92- mile stretch of state Route 375 the Extraterrestrial Highway.
Special road signs are planned for this desolate stretch, which draws about 50 vehicles a day.
Gov. Robert Miller suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that some signs for the Extraterrestrial Highway be placed flat on the ground "so aliens can land there."
Miller said the new name shows Nevada has a sense of humor, as was the case several years ago when a magazine named Highway 50's course through Nevada "the loneliest road in America."
"Instead of being insulted, we turned it around, set up way stations, and created T-shirts and bumper stickers reading, 'I survived the loneliest road in America,' " Miller said. The state will erect four 3-foot-by-8-foot Extraterrestrial Highway signs this year.
The highway runs between the tiny hamlets of Hiko and Warm Springs, across terrain ranging from three mountain passes to desert decked with scrub brush and Juniper trees. The town of Rachel consists of a cluster of mobile homes, a gas station and the Little A'Le'Inn, a bar and cafe run by Travis and her husband, Joe.
On a recent morning, Pat Travis was tending to the kitchen, catching her breath from an invasion of Marines who stop by daily for breakfast before heading to duty at a nearby restricted military area.
Were they going to Area 51?
"Nope," she answered.
Where, then? "Can't say," she replied.
Pat Travis said several people who live in Rachel work at Area 51, or the Tonopah Test Range to the north, where the F-117A was based while it was still a classified project. She said the workers, military and civilian, are closemouthed.
"I have never had anybody who works at Area 51 tell us anything," she said. "We've had some of them get pretty drunk and they still don't tell anything."
Clark, 50, said he's witnessed mysterious sights such as "glowing orbs of light" around Area 51.
Many have made similar sightings in this haven for UFO buffs, Clark said. "The stuff that is being seen is alien, but under the control of our government," he said. The tiny cafe sells UFO-related T-shirts, caps and books. Its walls are lined with pictures of extraterrestrial types and photos taken from a distance of the hangars and 30,000- foot runway at Groom Lake.
The photos were taken before the government last year banned access to two bluffs overlooking the Groom Lake complex. UFO fans still seek out the black mailbox alongside Highway 375 that marks the road leading to restricted land around Area 51. Armed guards keep gawkers more than 7 miles from the area.
But they cannot block the sights and sounds, Clark says, such as the mysterious light and the deafening roar that sweeps across the remote valley when the Aurora takes to the sky. "It's louder than anything I've ever heard," Joe Travis said.
The Travises bought the cafe eight years ago while Joe was working in Tonopah, helping build the F-117A base. Pat Travis denied that the UFO stories are a ploy to sell paraphernalia at her tiny cafe. "I really believe in UFOs," she said, flipping a pancake on a griddle.
Pat Travis, 52, said once a strange beam of light pierced an iron door at the cafe. She has seen many strange sights in the nighttime sky, too, but has never encountered an alien being, she said.
Same for Joe Travis, 57. But he says he knows why: "I've heard if you smoke and drink, they won't have anything to do with you," the ruddy-faced, bearded Travis said, puffing on a cigarette while perched on a stool at the cafe's bar.
