Forget Area 51, Check Out The Green River Intergalactic Spaceport

I'm no stranger to Area 51. Not that I have ever been there, but with most of my paternal family hailing from Nye County, Nevada and a family legend that my grandmother signed NDAs when she retired from the titular secretive base itself, I've heard just about all of it. Until, that is, the meme to took over the internet, namely the "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop Us All," movement.

You see, the idea was that if a large enough group of people were to storm the gates, then the US government would have no choice but to allow the secrets of the military installation to become common knowledge among the American public. The Facebook event that was set for September 20th had about 2.1 Million respondents that said they were "going."

While she couldn't tell me exactly what she did, I remember my grandmother scoffing at the mere mention of aliens in Area 51. That was not the case for the small town of Green River, Wyoming in 1994, however. That was the year they founded the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. Yes, it's real. I'm not making this up.

In 1994, word got out about NASA tracking fragments of a comet that were on a collision course with Jupiter. While most of the scientific community simply had an interest to see what would happen to the gas giant, refugee-sympathetic city planners in Green River wanted to embrace the poor, huddled masses that might escape Jupiter's impending doom.

So, they set up an Intergalactic Spaceport. What you should know is that it's really just a 5,000 ft landing strip in the middle of nowhere, but it's been designated as a place for extraterrestrials to land in the event of first contact. Not quite as picturesque as Devil's Tower, but I bet there's more room for error in the Wyoming desert than the Black Hills.

Not only can you visit the spaceport, but they hold events there as well! No sign yet of any intergalactic visitors to any of the booths, but it's only a matter of time, right? Either way, Green River has hotels, water, cool things to check out, and definitely has a better chance of alien invasion than Area 51.

No but for real, don't try to storm Area 51, that's a really, really dumb idea.