For some Coachella Valley residents, the Trump administration’s release of materials connected with UFOs—or, as they’re more popularly known nowadays, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)—haven’t produced much of a jolt. Why? Because those strange objects in the sky have been appearing here for a long time.
In early May, the White House began its “transparency” mission in the realm of UAP documents, pictures and videos, distributing previously classified materials to the public via www.war.gov/ufo. There have been five informational rollouts—on May 8 and 22, June 12, July 10 and Aug. 7. Additional output is anticipated.
The aggregated data, from multiple agencies including all branches of the U.S. military and FBI, depict rapid-motion orbs, hovering lighted craft with unconventional configurations, and aerial movements over open spaces—without ready explanations. In fact, the federal provisos appended to each video and picture insist that readers “should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting analytical judgment … or factual determination.” In other words, it’s left for the individuals looking at the files to decide for themselves.
That’s a contrast from the Project Blue Book era of 1947-’69, when the U.S. Air Force seemed to go out of its way to deter the public from any notion that bizarre sightings all around the country had out-of-this-world potential. The attitude so flustered Northwestern University astronomy professor J. Allen Hynek, a Project Blue Book investigator, that he broke with the U.S. government’s position and advocated a realistic approach to UFO inquiries, which recognized that what many eyewitnesses were seeing couldn’t be dismissed as mere delusion. In January 1966, Hynek pointed out in a United Press International interview that the “Air Force is getting better than one UFO report a day”—and not all of them were from eccentrics or the optically challenged.
The Coachella Valley is one of the locations where UFOs/UAPs have been witnessed over decades.
In broad daylight on Nov. 2, 1962, Desert Hot Springs resident Sophie Stewart called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department while watching an unidentified object “zigzag” east and west for nearly a half-hour on the horizon. The Desert Sun picked up the story. There was no official explanation for what the object may have been.
One of the more fascinating celestial events occurred in early August 1965. It began with “four consecutive days … of UFO sightings” across the Midwest and Lower Plains states, according to UPI. On Aug. 10, a fiery object was spotted by people throughout Southern California on an eastbound course that began at the ocean and ended in the desert. Numerous media outlets ran with the story. The Desert Sun interviewed one witness, Jean Steiner of Palm Springs, who said the UFO “streaked a long tail and headed straight across the sky.” Because of the way it faded from view, there were suggestions it might have been a meteorite or disintegrating satellite.
Some closer “encounters” occurred in the 1970s. UPI reported that, on the evening of Nov. 8, 1973, 19-year-old Patrick Archer of Saginaw, Mich., was driving on Interstate 10 westbound, destined for a relative’s place in San Juan Capistrano, when he spotted a circular object with amber and green lights hovering over an orchard just west of Blythe. He got out of his vehicle for a better look and to snap photographs. Archer said the craft made no sound. He flagged down another motorist, who joined him, immediately yelling, “It looks like a UFO!” Frightened, Archer hastily departed and continued on I-10. He told deputies at the sheriff’s Indio Station that the thing pursued him, prompting him to accelerate to 115 mph to get away before it finally disappeared. The young man was described in the wire report as “hysterical,” leaving his roll of film with deputies to develop before heading on to Orange County. The incident was reportedly turned over to the Air Force for investigation.
Only three days later, UPI reported that a pair of Los Angeles Police Department officers, C.C. Smith and John Wynkoop, out of the Hollenbeck Station, responded to a call about a UFO and found it just before 10 p.m. The object—circular and larger than their patrol vehicle—dove as if preparing to land before coming to an abrupt halt and hovering at an unspecified altitude. As it moved away, the officers pursued it, reaching 70 mph on city streets before the UFO went vertical and vanished “at an unbelievable rate of speed,” according to their police report.
On the night of April 5, 1977, at least a dozen witnesses watching the skies over Indio, Sky Valley and Thermal reported three to four flat-bottomed objects with red lights, alternately in motion or hovering. One party told The Desert Sun the UFOs were visible for a half-hour, and the largest was 100 feet long. Multiple people called the Indio Police Department. California Highway Patrol Officer Tom Granger, en route to Indio via eastbound I-10, said he saw the objects “make a left sweep, then a right sweep” at around 3,000 feet. He initially assumed they were military, “but the strange thing was, they didn’t make any noise,” he was quoted as saying. Later suggestions that the craft were possibly helicopters out of the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center failed to gain traction, given that extended low-level military flights over congested areas wouldn’t happen without forewarning. Nobody from the base claimed them, either.
One of the witnesses said an almost translucent pulsating light—which he first misidentified as a helicopter—noiselessly approached his home and abruptly split into three distinct objects.
Before the 1970s closed, Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies established a local phone number for Coachella Valley residents to report unusual aerial phenomena.
Sightings continued in the ensuing years, with similar events in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area, when it was teeming with military traffic from the then-active George and Norton Air Force bases, as well as March AFB. How much UFO activity may have been a byproduct or direct consequence of military ops is speculative. Some sightings corresponded with explainable events, such as missile launches from Vandenberg AFB, drifting weather balloons, Venus at peak illumination, or conjunctions of Mars and Jupiter—and there have been hoaxes.
The Mutual UFO Network has maintained a digital archive going back to August 2001, and the Coachella Valley tally—to July of this year—is at 168 incidents. Southern California MUFON director Mike Riso looked at some of the more impressive sightings, telling the Coachella Valley Independent about one incident that got the attention of three people residing on the west end of Palm Springs after 1 a.m. on March 3, 2022.
One of the witnesses said an almost translucent pulsating light—which he first misidentified as a helicopter—noiselessly approached his home and abruptly split into three distinct objects. He grabbed his binoculars and ran outside, watching the three lighted objects “ascend to a ridge up the mountainside.” Over an estimated 45-minute span, they appeared to inspect something on the surface. They then reintegrated and departed “out of sight,” according to the statement provided to MUFON.
Perhaps the power of suggestion has played on some people’s emotions, willing them to want to see something. For more than two decades, the former Giant Rock Airport in Landers, just north of Yucca Valley, was the domain of George Van Tassel, an ardent ufologist who held yearly conferences, drawing a cross-section of people together to share information about astral and other experiences. (It was a forerunner to Contact in the Desert conventions.) Van Tassel told of encounters with visitors from other galaxies and how UFOs were not uncommon in the surrounding desert skies.
Even space “experts” admit there’s far more out there than we Earth-bound mortals may ever realize. Maybe this sort of acceptance, or the conditioning from decades of alleged happenings (crop circles, alien abductions, flying saucers, etc.) demonstrates why the White House’s release of UAP files hasn’t really shaken the public.
Maybe the most riveting declassified material—or event—is yet to come. In the 1970s, astronaut John W. Young (no relation to this reporter) was quoted by writer John Wallace Spencer as saying, “If you bet against (UFOs), you’d probably be betting against an almost sure thing.”
Paul Jarod Young is a veteran SoCal journalist, licensed commercial pilot and author of the new book 7 Down: Air Losses & Lessons Across the Inland Empire.
