![]() "I know how easy it is to be deceived by something in the sky," he said. But, as a World War II Naval aviator used to seeing unusual things, he seems to regard the event as little more than a curiosity. Webb seems willing enough to discuss his memory of the incident these days with anyone who asks. He went on to become the town's mayor in the 1970s and now, at the age of 96, serves as chairman of the boards at Farmington's Webb Chevrolet, where he still works nearly every afternoon. Webb's testimony lends the event considerable credibility. "This is what made it easy to determine that they were saucer-shaped." Webb told the paper he estimated the objects were small, about the size of a dinner plate, and noted the objects moved in an unusual way - "sideways, on edge and at every conceivable angle," he said. In his investigation of the incident, Marler would go on to dub that object "Red Leader" - a reference he believed "Star Wars" fans would appreciate.Īlso quoted in The Daily Times story was Marlo Webb, then a 26-year-old manager in the parts department at the Perry Smoak Chevrolet Garage on Main Street in downtown Farmington. Many of those witnesses reported seeing a single red object that appeared to be leading the others. Thatcher was quoted as emphatically denying a theory that the objects people had seen were bits of cotton floating in the air. ![]() Thatcher, head of the Farmington unit of the Soil Conservation Service. Several other witnesses were quoted in the story, as well, including merchants, housewives, mechanics, insurance agents and Harold F. "Moments later, there appeared to hundreds of them."īoddy declined to estimate the size or speed of the objects, but he said they appeared to flying at an altitude of approximately 15,000 feet. "All of a sudden, I noticed a few moving objects high in the sky," he is reported as having said. The account explains how the objects appeared to play tag, traveling at "almost unbelievable speeds." The paper quoted Boddy, a former Army captain, who said he was on Broadway Avenue when he became aware of the phenomenon. ![]() The Daily Times' account chronicles how pedestrians along Main Street could be seen looking skyward and pointing, and the paper reportedly was "deluged" with calls from readers reporting the objects, although the story explains that high winds and a dust storm prevented clear vision. Marler also notes the sightings were thoroughly documented and reported in various newspapers at the time, and references to it exist in a great many government documents, as well. and noon each day in the skies over San Juan County, not at night in some remote location where they were witnessed by only a single person or a handful of people.įarmington was a much smaller community in those days - it had a population of between 3,600 and 5,000 people then, according to Marler - but the incident was by no means restricted to just a few sets of eyeballs. Marler said there are several elements that separate the Farmington UFO incident from so many others, mostly the fact that so many people claim to have witnessed it. "He described the object and said several other people saw it, as well," she said. He definitely believed he witnessed something out of the ordinary that day, Tharp said. She remembers her uncle as a man not given to exaggeration, and said he wasn't the kind to call attention to himself by manufacturing outlandish stories. She recalls her late uncle regularly talking about the sighting when she was growing up and said the tale of the UFO armada is well known among the county's older residents. Patty Tharp of the San Juan County Historical Society is the niece of one of the witnesses to the incident, Clayton Boddy, who served as the business manager of The Daily Times in 1950. Many people who take a keen interest in the history of San Juan County share that fascination, and some of them have direct ties to the mass sighting that has become part of their family lore. Marler isn't alone in feeling compelled to gain a better understanding of the incident. "There was a lot more other than Farmington going on (during March 1950)," he said. He labels it "one of the most dramatic and well-documented cases in the history of UFO phenomenon" and said his research has uncovered dozens of similar sightings in the American Southwest, Mexico and Central America during that same time period. David Marler, an independent UFO researcher and author who works in the health care field, has spent years studying the Farmington UFO incident, delivering his findings in the form of a website that serves as the most exhaustive and in-depth report on the event.
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