UFOs, Area 51, Roswell

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Area 51 (Detachment 3) (also called Dreamland, McCartan's County, Paradise Ranch, Home Base, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake, The Box, Neverland, and other names) is a remote tract of land in the southwestern portion of Lincoln County in southern Nevada, located at the southern edge of a large dry salt flat called Groom Lake. It lies within the Nevada Test and Training Range and is owned by the United States Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. Area 51 contains an airfield whose primary purpose is believed to be the operation and analysis of enemy aircraft and weapons systems, and secret development and testing of new military aircraft. The airport code for Area 51 is XTA. Runway lengths are as follows: Runway 12-30 5420' x 120' concrete Runway 14-32 12000' x 200' concrete. Area 51 is the frequent subject of UFO conspiracy theories.

Geography

Area 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flats region of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location of many of the US Department of Energy's nuclear weapons tests. The Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility is approximately 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Groom Lake.

The designation "Area 51" is somewhat contentious, appearing on older maps of the NTS but not newer ones, yet the same naming scheme is used for other parts of the Nevada Test Site.

The area is connected to the internal NTS road network, with paved roads leading both to Mercury, to the northwest, and west to the Yucca Flats. Leading northeast from the lake, the wide and well-maintained Groom Lake Road runs through a pass in the Jumbled Hills. The road formerly led to mines in the Groom basin, but has been improved since their closure. Its winding course runs past a security checkpoint, but the restricted area around the base extends further east. (Unauthorized visitors who travel west on Groom Lake Road are usually observed first by guards located on the hills surrounding the pass, still several miles from the checkpoint). After leaving the restricted area (marked by numerous warning signs stating that "photography is prohibited" and that "use of deadly force is authorized" under the terms of the 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act) Groom Lake Road descends eastward to the floor of the Tikaboo Valley, passing the dirt-road entrances to several small ranches, before converging with Nevada State Route 375, the "Extraterrestrial Highway", south of Rachel.

Read more at Wikipedia.org