In 1950, Evelyn and Paul Trent spotted and photographed what appeared to be an unidentified flying object floating over their farm near McMinnville, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Paul shot two photographs on his Universal Roamer camera of what he later described as “a round, shiny, wingless object.” The images ended up on the front page of The Oregonian, and later in LIFE, the most widely circulated magazine in the country at the time.
Years later, at the peak of UFO frenzy in 1967, the U.S. Air Force commissioned a study to look into reported sightings. The physicist behind the paper, Edward U. Condon, dismissed most sightings, but the Trents’ account was a different story. The study stated: “This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated — geometric, psychological and physical — appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.”
In 1999, McMinnville, one of Oregon’s better-known wine towns, decided to embrace the Trents’ story as a claim to fame. That year, the town hosted its first UFO Festival, sponsored by local hotel and brewery chain McMenamins. The 20th UFO Festival took place last weekend, and the extraterrestrial fervor hasn’t dissipated in two decades.
To this day, the photographs shot by Paul Trent, who died in 1998, are considered to be some of the most credible images of UFOs ever captured. Of course, as with all things extraterrestrial, skeptics remain — many believe the UFO is actually a side-view truck mirror strung up by wire. That doesn’t keep McMinnville from embracing its quirky history with the alien once a year.
Festivities at the 2019 edition included an “Alien Abduction” fun run, space-themed live music, films exploring unexplained phenomena, a parade, and scores of opportunities to listen to ufologists share their findings.
Marilyn Schultz of nearby Carlton has attended all 20 UFO Festivals. She’s involved in fundraising for a state-of-the-art observatory and planetarium in Carlton. “We want to have fun,” Schultz said. “But [we] also want people to look up and know what they’re looking up at.”
Serious sky-watchers abound at the UFO Festival, but its main attraction might be simple, offbeat fun. This couple, for instance, entered their beta fish — dressed as an alien flying in a UFO, of course — in the pet costume contest.
As these farmers dressed as aliens suggest, the festival honors both the town’s UFO connection and its agrarian roots.
Serious followers of the latest extraterrestrial theories — and those who are just alien-curious — attended a May 18 panel discussion at McMinnville’s Community Center. Five panelists congregated to answer audience questions and discuss their own history with UFOs.
When audience members asked about the panelists’ most frightening moments in the field, Jeremy Corbell, a documentary filmmaker, laughed. “I’m terrified in general,” he said.
Another panelist, David Fravor, a former Navy commander, said he witnessed a Tic Tac-shaped UFO during a training mission over the Pacific in 2004. In the years since Fravor’s sighting, more Navy pilots have reported similarly shaped objects flying in Naval airspace, according to The Washington Post. Sightings have occurred on such a regular basis since 2014 that the Navy recently drafted a formal procedure for pilots to document such instances.
Unfortunately for UFO fiends, the Navy does not plan to share any information it gathers with the public. In other words, the mystery of possible alien life in McMinnville and other parts of the UFO-obsessed West, like near Area 51 in Nevada and Roswell, New Mexico, will remain — for now.
Fravor, for his part, encourages curiosity on the part of the public. “Don’t underestimate the capabilities of the U.S. government,” he said. “Have you seen the news lately?”
