Greater Vegas — Rachel

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Huntington Press editor and former Nevada guidebook writer Deke Castleman a couple of years ago. With all the attention on Rachel these days over the uncertainty of the so-called Alienstock festival, we thought we’d throw out the mothballs, dust it off, and bring it back into the light of day. For our coverage of the purported festival, you can read our two Questions of the Day on the subject, one here and one there. Take it, Deke.]

Nevada is made up of all kinds of towns: casino towns, border towns, farming towns, ranching towns, mining towns, railroad towns, lakefront towns, reservation towns, even an ammunition-dump town and a gun town. But Nevada also boasts a type of town that’s unique not only to the state, but also to the nation and possibly the world.

A UFO town.

Welcome to Rachel, the closest civilian settlement to the top-secret Area 51. This tiny town of 60 or so souls is a destination for UFO pilgrims from all over the world — many of whom claim to have seen some strange fast-moving and quick-turning lights and heard unearthly noises in the big sky over the Air Force base.

The author of a local guide sums it up: “The people of Rachel have been living under bizarre aerial displays for years. Almost everyone in town has seen unusual lights.”

Still, he maintains, “Recognizing a flying saucer or exotic aircraft here can be immensely difficult amid the vast circus of routine military activity, the optical illusions of the desert, and the confusing swamp of speculation brought by true believers of all stripes.”

Rachel was a tiny tungsten-mining settlement in the early 1970s and named for the first baby born there. The town might have dried up and blown away like so many Nevada mining settlements before it were it not for the UFO craze inspired by the controversies and conspiracies swirling around nearby Area 51.

In 1996, the state Department of Transportation designated NV 375 the Extraterrestrial Highway and erected road signs to that effect, photo ops for intrepid travelers who make it up this far, only 150 miles from Vegas, but, if you’ll excuse the hyperbole, galaxies away.

The population and the town itself have shrunk since I first started visiting Rachel in the 1990s; the gas station and Kwik Mart closed down 10 years ago. But still here is the renowned Little A’Le’Inn (formerly the Rachel Bar and Grill).

Anyone remember Bob Stupak’s Vegas World, with its “Sky’s the Limit” theme? This funky little diner would put it to shame. In fact, check out the poster on the Little A’Le’Inn’s wall of what a real extraterrestrially themed casino might look like:

Throw in the wall of photos of UFOs and ETs, the purple alien staring out the front window, all the themed weirdness outside the place, and the gift nook selling alien blankets, blow-up dolls, T-shirts, mousepads, posters, beach balls, ball caps, magnets, mugs, shot glasses, ash trays, and bumper stickers, and you really have to see it all to believe it.

For some reason that might or might not have anything to do with the Final Frontier, hundreds of dollar bills with personal messages are tacked and taped to the ceiling over the bar area where beers are $4-$5 and taste mighty good on a hot desert day, or try a Beam Me Up, Scotty, made from Jim Beam, 7 Up, and Scotch of course.

The menu is about as basic as it can be, being 150 miles from anywhere that can supply the place. They do serve three meals: pancakes $4.99, bacon and eggs $8.25, three-egg omelet $9.25; hamburger “steak” $10.25, liver and bacon $10.25, roast beef $13.25; ice cream $1.99 and pie $3.49. But lunch is what most visitors eat, particularly the “world-famous” Alien Burger, with lettuce, tomato, pickle, and alien sauce $6.75, Galaxy Wrap, with turkey, bacon, cheese, lettuce, and tomato $6.25, and Saucer chili burger $9.25, all with fries. The decidedly earthbound BLT is $8.25.

If you’re into geocaching, upwards of 1,500 caches are located along the Extraterrestrial Highway, all on the north side of the road, so do them northbound heading toward Warm Springs.

And if you have your heart set on seeing strange lights or hearing otherworldly noises, you can spend the night in one of the rooms on site. If you don’t experience any of it, your neighbor, with whom you share a bathroom, might.