I am not a science fiction aficionado, nor am I an alien watcher, but I have friends who are. As a result, I couldn’t get close to Roswell, New Mexico without taking it all in. I’m extremely glad I did because for a small town in the middle of nowhere, this town has its tourism act together. It includes a nicely coordinated wayfinding program, public art, a UFO Museum and gift shops galore. Roswell is a city of just less of 50,000, which is known as a city nearest where aliens crashed in 1947. The city has embraced that history.
Roswell is regional magnet of trade from a wide area. It has a Target, a large Walmart, Sam’s Club, Albertsons, and a Home Depot, in addition to many of the other types of small industries that are required in a regional business setting. In addition to the multitude of tourists who come to town, this community provides core services to a very large swatch of southeastern NM. This gives the city a unique advantage when providing a daily trade base, while providing great opportunities for tourists who come to visit.
There has been a coordinated effort in Roswell to send a single message — this is where the aliens first appeared. Many of the local businesses used art, naming, and signage to play up this concept. Even several of the chains (and there were more than a few) incorporated it into their signage and messaging. There were little green men with spaceships and satellites everywhere. One of the standouts includes the courthouse, which was clearly there for a century before the aliens appeared, as Roswell is the county seat of Chaves County. It had the appropriate courthouse dome on it, and I’m willing to bet once upon a time it was gold, copper, or bronze. But today it is alien green.
I mentioned earlier that I am mailing postcards to the younger grandchildren, and I had run out of postcard stamps. I had postcards to drop off from Guadalupe National Park, so I took those to the post office and went in to buy stamps. I asked the postal clerk if he would put them in the outgoing box for me. Without any question, the guy took them and before I finished the transaction, he hand-cancelled the postcards. If I had known that he was going to hand cancel them, I would have completed the Roswell cards and had them postmarked from Roswell.
