Revelers reach gates of Area 51 then peacefully rejoin party

HIKO, Nev. (AP) — Thousands of curious Earthlings from around the globe traveled to festivals, and several hundred made forays toward the secret Area 51 military base in the Nevada desert on Friday, drawn by an internet buzz and a social media craze sparked by a summertime Facebook post inviting people to “Storm Area 51.”

“They can’t stop all of us,” the post joked. “Lets see them aliens.”

In the end — at the appointed hour of 3 a.m. Sept. 20 — about 75 to 100 people braved chilly darkness and a bumpy, dusty 8-mile (13-kilometer) drive to the Rachel gate of the legendary former top-secret U.S. Air Force base. Another 40 traveled about 13 miles (21 kilometers) on a more rugged washboard-dirt road to a different gate in Lincoln County, more than two hours’ drive north of Las Vegas.

The sheriff in neighboring Nye County reported that about 40 people gathered about 3 a.m. at a conspicuously green “Area 51 Alien Center,” about 90 minutes’ drive west of Las Vegas in Amargosa Valley and approached yet another base gate before leaving after “heated warnings” from officers.

No one found UFOs or space aliens, Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee said.

At the Rachel gate, they did find they weren’t alone, amid bright floodlights, watchful cameras and who-knows-what in a squat tan bunker building with blackout windows — all surrounded by razor wire.

Polite and patient local sheriff’s deputies ushered one woman away when she stepped too far forward. They arrested a man from Canada who urinated near the gate and cited him for indecent exposure, Lee said. The woman was released with a warning.

“We intend to keep those officers there throughout the event,” Lee told reporters Friday. “You know: Come. Look. See what you can see. But just don’t cross.”

As he spoke, a trickle of vehicles grew to a stream on a two-lane state road dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway toward Rachel, a town of 50 residents now hosting more than 2,000 “Alienstock” campers and alien-seekers.

Another event started in Hiko, a crossroads town a 45-minute drive closer to Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Matty Roberts, a 20-year-old from Bakersfield, California, who sparked the Area 51 phenomenon with a latenight Facebook post and then broke with Little A’Le’Inn owner Connie West over production of the Rachel event, hosted a Thursday evening event at an outdoor venue in downtown Las Vegas — also using the “Alienstock” name.

“It started as a joke, and now people are getting to know each other,” said Tracy Ferguson, 23, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who said the internet gave him the idea to drive to Nevada with his girlfriend, Jade Gore, 19, of Worthington, Minnesota.

Gore quit her job at a Dairy Queen and dyed her hair and eyebrows green. They drove through Wyoming, Utah and into Nevada with “Area 51 bound” and “Comin 4 Dem Alien Cheeks” in green paint on their car windows.

“People were taking pictures and laughing the whole way,” Gore said.