Rachel, Nevada

Overview

Rachel is over 100 miles (160 km) north of Las Vegas in the Great Basin desert, along Nevada Highway 375 (the "Extraterrestrial Highway"). The tiny town receives a substantial number of visitors and tourists, catered to by a small tourist shop, a 12-room motel, and an alien-themed restaurant and bar, the Little A'Le'Inn.

Several unpaved roads near Rachel lead from Highway 375 across the terrain to the boundary of Area 51.

Rachel's resident population generally numbers around 50 inhabitants. Some of Rachel's inhabitants are involved in ranching. Most of the year-round inhabitants live in mobile homes. Rachel has never had a post office. The children are bused to Alamo, Nevada for school.

Early years

Rachel was founded in May 1973 by a local alfalfa farmer named D.C. Day. The community was first known as Tempiute Village, and then later as Sand Springs. On February 15, 1977, the town was renamed Rachel after the first baby born in the valley, Rachel Jones. Sadly, Rachel Jones died on May 23, 1980. In memory of her, Rachel residents created a cemetery and memorial park. In 1980, the Rachel Baptist Mission, Rachel's only church, began service in a donated mobile home. Since then, a part-time pastor has come to Rachel for religious services every Sunday morning.

Mid-air collision

On July 10, 1986, at about 4:10 pm, two F-16's of the Norwegian Air Force collided in mid-air while participating in Red Flag exercises near Rachel. One of the F-16's crashed within Rachel, only 25 yards (23 m) from the edge of Rachel's mobile home park. The pilot of the downed fighter had ejected safely before the crash, and the other F-16 made it back to Nellis Air Force Base. Apparently, the pilot of the downed F-16 sustained no major injuries. He was transported from the crash site within 20 minutes of the crash by a U.S. Air Force helicopter.

Recent events

While a local tungsten mine was operative, the community numbered over 500 inhabitants, but after the mine's closing in 1988, the population rapidly dwindled. D.C. Day, Rachel's founder, died on July 25, 1997. Fay Day, his widow, died on March 13, 2011. She was buried in the Rachel Cemetery on March 19, 2011.

In 1995, the Rachel Baptist Mission moved into a permanent building at the same site which it had occupied previously. The Area 51 Research Center, a small UFO souvenir shop, closed in fall of 2001. It has since re-opened in a corner of the Little A'Le'Inn. The community's only gas station went out of business in the winter of 2006–07, shortly after being acquired by a new owner, an investor from California.

In 2006, KFC created a giant company logo on the ground at the north edge of Rachel and claimed it to be the first logo visible from space. Constructed in early November, it took six days to assemble the 65,000 colored tiles on 87,500 square feet (8,130 m²) of flat desert terrain. The logo also had a hidden message on the tie area of the logo that featured an impostor colonel holding a sign over his head, reading "Finger Lickin' Good". The logo was removed in mid-2007.

Rachel was featured in an episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends which covered the UFO subculture. Rachel was mentioned in a two-part episode of The X-Files entitled Dreamland, in which a secret agent aware of the hidden backstory of the show, played by Michael McKean, resided in the town. It is also a key place in the first person shooter game titled BlackSite: Area 51.

The producers of the movie Independence Day, which filmed some scenes in Rachel, gave the town a time capsule, which is installed near the inn.