But Crosby and a klatch of other local alien boosters have helped persuade citizens of this conservative city of 48,000 to close their eyes, hold their noses, and embrace humanoids with bulging eyes as the stuff of economic necessity. A little background for non-UFO buffs may be in order. Unable to identify the material, which was light and thin and the color of dull metal, he went to the local sheriff, who turned the matter over to the military. The material was retrieved, and on July 8, the U.S. Air Force issued a press release, saying it had possession of a flying saucer. The following day, after creating an international sensation, the material from the field was identified as a weather balloon, and for decades the case remained closed.
Truth is out there.
Then, in the late '70s, UFO researchers conducted new interviews with witnesses, combed declassified government documents from the era, and decided the government had covered up a genuine saucer crash. In 1989, the popular TV show Unsolved Mysteries devoted a half-hour segment to the Roswell story, and suddenly new witnesses began to bloom from the New Mexico desert like flowers after a rain. The X-Files and recent blockbuster movie Independence Day generated still more interest in the crash. As a result, tourists have been arriving in droves to experience Roswell firsthand. Organized as a nonprofit business in 1991 by developer Max Littell, the museum has operated in the black since its inception.