Witnesses describe a silvery craft with a smooth, liquid-like surface that destroyed 48 feet of railroad track on impact. Ranchers reportedly climbed onto the wreckage before the military cordoned off the area. Meador shares accounts from children who encountered a metallic, robotic being with pincher-like arms on nearby Squaw Peak. He also describes magnetized rock samples from the crash site that multiple geologists have been unable to identify.
The investigation has drawn unwanted attention. Meador recounts unsolicited calls from a Hill Air Force Base historian, being followed by blacked-out vans during field research, and learning that men in black impersonated him to interview a witness. He notes that the government later built radar stations overlooking the crash site under the cover of Project High Range.
Key Moments
July 7, 1952: two objects collide over Nevada: Meador lays out the incident: a fiery orange object descending from Idaho/Utah and a green T-shaped craft coming from the Pacific Northwest, with Hill AFB scrambling a B-17 in pursuit and the two objects ending in two separate Nevada crash sites.
Train tracks bent like pretzels: A Nevada Northern Railway worker tells Meador the train came across a section of track torn up like pretzels, with rails thrown into the nearby creek - and a still-smoking liquidy-silver craft skidded into the brush at the base of the mountain.
The magnetic rock from the craft: Meador holds up a dark, smooth, lava-rock-looking sample given to him by a local historian in Ruth, Nevada - magnetic, identical to samples from the 1952 southern crash and a 1970s landing, supposedly the liquid that dripped off the UFO and hardened.
Project High Range and the radar towers: In 1955 the government built Project High Range on Squaw Peak overlooking Ely, ostensibly to track the X-15 - but Meador says workers in the 1970s told him the real mission shifted to monitoring UFO activity in case the visitors returned.
Men in black impersonate Meador: An Ely woman calls Meador to thank him for the professional interview he just gave - except he was still in Las Vegas. Two men in black suits had arrived in a blacked-out van knowing his college, his friend's Ohio history, everything.