The International UFO Museum and Research Center is appropriately nestled on Roswell, New Mexico’s Main Street. Back in 1947 when the famous “Incident” occurred, the building served as a movie theater while likely going on to show many of the science fiction films its city would one day inspire. The museum opened in 1991 and not only features information on the Roswell Incident but the history of UFO sightings and alleged encounters worldwide. After spending the earlier portion of the morning perusing the local gift shops while taking full advantage of any and all goofy photo-ops, we were now ready for a more serious approach.

In this regard, we were far from alone. Although it was a Wednesday morning there were already groups of anxious visitors (many of them families) standing around the parking lot waiting for the museum to open. As soon as the doors unlocked, we all shuffled in…not just UFO nerds like us but people from all walks of life. This was made even more clear via a couple of large maps hanging near the museum’s entrance. All guests were encouraged to take a thumb-tack and highlight where they were from. Considering the fact that Roswell is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, that plethora of tacks we saw sticking in just about every corner of the United States as well as nations across the globe were pretty impressive.

The museum staff told us that we were free to photograph everything in the museum with the exception of the gift shop. I’m not entirely sure why that was taboo but I will say that of all the UFO-related merchandise in Roswell, theirs was by far the best.

Although David and I did end up taking a considerable amount of pictures, I’ll only share a small sampling of them here, lest I get another cyber-spanking like the one I received from Lauren Coleman after publishing too many images of his International Museum of Cryptozoology a couple of years back.

It was no surprise that the first portion of the museum was dedicated to the Roswell Incident and featured various items used by the locals during that occurrence. There were also framed testimonials from residents claiming they were threatened to keep silent in the days/weeks that followed as well as sketches from witnesses claiming to have seen the bodies of aliens.

The Museum also offered a couple of great photo ops of their own, such as a UFO hanging over a group of alien grays as well as a perfect replica of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Personally, one of my favorite features of any museum are detailed dioramas and this one had some pretty neat ones along with colorful art work.

The museum also showed its humorous side with a wall dedicated to Roswell-inspired satirical cartoons.

One of the last things you saw before leaving the main exhibit room were props used from a scene in the 1994 made-for-TV movie, Roswell, starring Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen.

After leaving the museum we made sure to visit all the other novelty shops we’d missed earlier that morning. Incidentally, we’d like to share a photo our friend, Greg Valent sent us after my last post. Greg visited Roswell back in 2002 and still has one of the souvenir shirts he’d purchased. WordPress doesn’t allow for photo comments so we promised we’d share it here. Thanks Greg!

Anyone interested in going to Roswell should note that, while it’s a lot of fun and definitely worth visiting, you can see just about everything in under a day. For us this was a good thing as we still had a lot of ground to cover. We ate down the street (at the Cattle Baron Steak and Seafood a.k.a. the same place we had dinner at the night before) and then took off for Deming.

But not before making a couple of interesting stops along the way.

Coming Up…Getting “Smokey” while Hot on the Tarantula Trail!

Dave Fuentes~