EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY\Nevada renames lonely stretch for its UFO tourism.

Byline: Carol Morello Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Earth to Nevada: What's that hovering and blinking and zooming above the desert north of Las Vegas?

People have seen something buzzing around the not-so-secret top-secret air base that the military will not even acknowledge exists but where experimental spy planes are believed to be tested.

Maybe Nevada state government knew something when it designated a desolate blacktop road the Extraterrestrial Highway. It skirts the base.

Or maybe it is just, in the words of one critic, more "lunacy" in a state that thrives on hype.

Whatever it is, within a month signs will go up proclaiming the new designation for the 98-mile stretch of what used to be simply Route 375. Supporters of the state transportation board's Feb. 1 action hope it will create an economic mini-boom of UFO tourism along the rural road that now averages fewer than 200 cars a day and has only one town, Rachel.

The town has barely 100 people and only one business: the Little A' Le' Inn, where signs by the door greet earthlings and UFO crews alike.

Alas, the state Department of Transportation will not follow Gov. Bob Miller's tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the signs be placed flat on the ground so emissaries from outer space could use them as landing pads. All signs will be vertical, and in English, though there is talk about a little flying-saucer logo.

"We've had a lot of fun with this," said Roy Neighbors, a gold mine operator and legislator who ushered a highway renaming bill through the state Assembly, where colleagues dressed up as Darth Vader and donned antennae headbands for the vote.

"We already have volcanoes erupting and pirate ships sinking, the Sphinx and Caesar's Palace," Neighbors said, referring to gaudy Las Vegas casinos. "It's all part of the hype that's Nevada."

The mystique that supports the highway designation centers on Groom Lake, a dry lake bed in the Emigrant Valley 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The air base there, where the U-2 spy plane and stealth bomber were developed, does not appear on Federal Aviation Administration pilots' charts or U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps. On old U.S. government maps, it is called, simply, Area 51.

At Nellis Air Force Base, which encompasses Area 51, questions are answered with a pat statement acknowledging only that Nellis is home to classified activities crucial to the nation's security.

Those who insist that taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent have camped out and taken photos of huge hangars and a 6-mile-long runway.

Some think the government tests captured alien spacecraft, suspicions buttressed by a former government physicist who said he worked on flying saucers in camouflaged hangars dug into a mountain there. That was in 1989; now a small cottage industry has developed outside the perimeter signs announcing that patrols are authorized to shoot trespassers.

Drawn by stories, a clutch of shivering sleuths recently swept their binoculars across the heavens, searching the Milky Way for something they could not identify or explain away.

"Look over there," crowed a hospital administrator from Los Angeles, pointing to a light above the horizon, recalling the previous night's sighting of something she was convinced was a flying saucer's lights.

"That's Venus," said Chuck Clark, an amateur astronomer and author of a book about Area 51. Clark has escorted busloads of Japanese tourists to the perimeter. He has sneaked over the boundary to harvest his Christmas trees.

"It makes me angry they deny there's a base here," he said, turning his headlights on a TV camera tucked into mountain brush. "Don't make us out like bozos and tell us it's not there. If they just acknowledged there are secret things going on, from the git-go, 90 percent of the people looking at the base wouldn't be here."

Clark believes that virtually all of what people think are UFOs are experimental aircraft from Area 51.

"Most of the people who come here are from big cities, and they've never really seen the sky," he said. "And most don't know military technology. It's a wild leap of faith to assume because it's unexplained, it comes from another planet or star. But, yes, there are some things beyond our understanding."

Then there is Glenn Campbell, a computer programmer who moved to Nevada from Boston to pursue an obsession with UFOs. He established the Area 51 Research Center and blazed a trail to a mountaintop overlooking Area 51, naming it Freedom Ridge. The government appropriated the mountaintop last year in the name of national security, so Campbell moved to Las Vegas, where a video camera outside his apartment overlooks an entry to an airport where employees of Area 51 board flights to the base. Campbell counts those entering.

Campbell opposed the renaming of Route 375.

"It creates a myth that you can come here anytime and see flying saucers," Campbell said. "When you turn it into a circus atmosphere, credible UFO stories are not taken seriously. It goes without saying there's life out there. The question is: Is it here?"

Many think the answer is yes.

In the eight years they have run the A' Le' Inn, Joe and Pat Travis have hosted guests who have awakened to sense an alien presence in their rooms at the inn's mobile trailers. While driving along the Extraterrestrial Highway, Pat Travis once heeded an internal voice warning her to slow down, only to avoid running into black bulls on the highway in front of her. "Coincidence? Angel?" she asks. "I am positive there are beings here."

When the idea of renaming Route 375 was broached, a lobbyist who calls himself only Merlin, ambassador and extraterrestrial from the planet Draco, began drumming up support.

"There was some resistance because there still is a measure of fear among people," Merlin said. "This is a primitive planet. There is intergalactic hatred, similar to the terrestrial hatred we know about. For some . . . it was a little too soon to . . . have an Extraterrestrial Highway."

Merlin argues that the designation recognizes the existence of alien beings among us. State officials say otherwise.

"We're noncommittal on that point," said Ken Evans, a spokesman for the state Tourism Commission. "If it says anything, it's that we tend to take a broad view here in Nevada. We're known for tolerance."

Asked whether he believed in aliens, Assemblyman Neighbors responded: "I don't want to ruin a good story with too many facts."

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PHOTO

Photo (1) Formerly Highway 375, the 92-mile stretch now called the Extraterrestrial Highway skirts a secret U.S. military installation that UFO buffs insist is hiding information on aliens. (2) The Little A' Le' Inn, owned by Joe Travis, left, and his wife, Pat, is the only business in Rachel, Nev. (3) Amateur astronomer Chuck Clark indicates photos of supposed UFOs and the secret Area 51 facility. Associated Press