Small W. Pa. town cashes in on mystery of 1965 crash, UFO buffs

2/10/2008, 7:12 p.m. ET
The Associated Press

MOUNT PLEASANT, Pa. (AP) — Forty-two years ago, a fiery object flashed across the sky and landed in a wooded area in Westmoreland County.

Federal authorities said it was a meteor. Some speculated about a Russian spacecraft. But a few residents said they saw an acorn-shaped object being hauled away — and many believe that what fell that night was a UFO.

Whatever the truth, the mystery is bringing in the dollars — and the Kecksburg fire department has big shopping plans.

Kecksburg, a small town of about 200 about 43 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, is selling $25 hoodies, $12 Christmas ornaments, hats, T-shirts, beer mugs and anything else that can have a glowing acorn flying through the sky emblazoned on it.

In a small room in the basement of Kecksburg Emergency Medical Service, Ronnie Struble fills mail orders and monitors the visitors, sometimes busloads of them, who have found this dot on the map and helped bring in $10,000 worth of sales last year.

"Punxsutawney has its groundhog. We got the UFO," Struble told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"Our goal is to make some money to help pay for a new truck. This kind of helps," he added.

Three documentaries between 1999 and 2005 have helped perpetuate the mystery, highlighting the unknowns and arousing the curiosity of UFO and sci-fi buffs.

Most recently, the courts have ordered NASA to continue searching for documents that might reveal what happened the night of Dec. 9, 1965, when something came out of the sky and landed near Kecksburg.

Whatever it was, state police quickly cordoned off the area. U.S. Army and Air Force members combed a 75-acre area, keeping hundreds of onlookers at bay, sometimes at gunpoint.

Some residents say, that late that night, after several hours of searching, the military removed a Volkswagon-sized, acorn-shaped object on a military flatbed covered with a tarp.

Meanwhile, business has been so good for the fire department that they plan to open a second store in the station and a UFO restaurant sometime this year.

The town's annual festival has been renamed "Kecksburg Old Fashion and UFO Festival Days." Two years ago, the fire department held the first UFO gathering to mark the 40-year anniversary of the crash.

A street near the crash site, once called Trice Road, has been renamed Meteor Road. But the road signs were disappearing so fast that Struble began selling $25 replicas.

"This is our little niche and we're going to use it," Kecksburg firefighter Rich Comp said. "The mystery of it is business for us. I hope they never find out what happened. It would break the bubble."