Desert Center, California: Epicenter of Flying Saucer Reports - Part I
By Dr. Raymond A. Keller, II, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray”
Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet
Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus
Cosmic Ray's Excellent Venus Adventure
Lady Columba Venus Revelations
Raymond A. Keller, PhD, a.k.a. “Cosmic Ray,” is the author of the international awards-winning Venus Rising Series, published by Headline Books and available on amazon.com, while supplies last.
Be sure and check out the fourth addition to this series, The Vast Venus Conspiracy, which has recently become available on amazon.com. Book five in the series, Lady Columba Venus Revelations, will premiere at the Siskiyou Masonic Lodge in Mt. Shasta, California, at the “Meet the Venusians” conference, 26-30 August 2020. See Rob Potter’s website, thepromiserevealed.com, for further information on the conference or to purchase tickets.
“Honey, I think you missed the Desert Center turn-off.”
Hugh Marlowe as Dr. Russell A. Marvin and Joan Taylor as his wife Carol Marvin get buzzed by a flying saucer on a desolate Southern California desert highway in Columbia Pictures’ 1956 sci-fi classic, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. To see the exciting trailer, click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4fdX8gUMY.
On Being a Contactee
As a contactee with our friendly neighborhood Venusians, I follow in the footsteps with many of the pioneering lights in the UFO community. There is much that I have learned from such illuminated ones as Orfeo Angelucci, Albert Coe, Gabriel Green, Dana Howard, Gloria Lee, Howard Menger, Omnec Onec and many others. But probably the most well-known of all the contactees, and the mentor to them all, and myself, was none other than the amateur astronomer from Valley Center, California, George Adamski (1891-1965). While Adamski was not the first contactee to arrive on the scene in the previous century, he was certainly the most well-known due to the popularity of his three bestselling books about the planet Venus as the point of origin for the flying saucers which cruise our skies: Flying Saucers Have Landed, co-authored by Desmond Leslie (New York, New York: British Book Centre, 1953); Inside the Space Ships (New York, New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1955) and Flying Saucers Farewell (New York, New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961).
Desert Center Gains Notoriety
It took the landing of a spaceship from Venus to put the small town of Desert Center, California, on the map. As with the rest of the United States in 1952, there were sightings galore of the flying saucers since 1947, and maybe a little before that; but as far as most people were concerned, none of these objects had ever landed with any of its occupants getting out of the craft and meeting a regular human being of Earth.
Then, at 12:30 midday on 20 November 1952, a then 61-year-old amateur astronomer and metaphysical instructor, George Adamski, was visiting from Valley Center, California, with four friends packed in his car, where they encountered a landed flying saucer on the desert floor north of Blythe and Desert Center, California. Adamski understood from the barrage of Southern California newspaper clippings he had read throughout 1952 about a massive flying saucer flap taking place in this area that he and his group’s best chance of actually getting close to a landed saucer would come about by being situated right at the spot they now found themselves. Adamski expressed a feeling that extraterrestrials had guided him to this very location, albeit such a remote one.
Adamski was the only one in the group to approach the landed saucer, availing himself of the opportunity of speaking with its pilot, who self-identified telepathically with Adamski as a Venusian named Orthon. According to Adamski, the extraterrestrial looked human, having straight blonde hair and being about 5’4” in height. The Venusian was clad in a light tan jumpsuit and took on an androgynous appearance, having a slender figure and delicate fingers, as well as a lack of any discernible facial hair.
Adamski’s four companions signed sworn affidavits that this meeting actually took place. One of them was a prominent archaeologist from Prescott, Arizona, Dr. George Hunt Williamson, who made plaster of Paris impressions of Orthon’s footprints. The true story of what happened to those plaster casts, and the result of their analysis by a Livermore Labs atomic scientist, are found in my most recent book, The Vast Venus Conspiracy (Terra Alta, West Virginia: Headline Books, 2020).
Source of Adamski saucer model below: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/308144799477661848/.
“Out-of-This-World Saucer”
Adamski himself took a series of photographs of the Venusian “scout ship” with two of his special cameras he brought along on this excursion, a Hagler-Dresden Graflex and a Brownie, just in case they ran into a real flying saucer. Pev Marley, the cameraman for Cecil B. DeMille’s movie classic, Greatest Show on Earth (Paramount Pictures, Hollywood, California, 1952), took the time to examine all of Adamski’s photographs taken of the scout ship on 20 November 1952, during a special closed-door meeting of the Air Force Reserve Officers held at an officer’s club in Los Angeles, California, on 1 June 1953. Of the photographs, Marley informed the assembled officers that, “If the pictures were faked, they were the cleverest I have ever seen.” The minutes of the Air Force Reserve Officers also records that, “The Air Force has agreed, unofficially, that these saucers come from out of this world.”
Saucer Sightings over the Colorado Desert
The Southern California towns of Blythe and Desert Center are located in the Colorado Desert, an area covering the eastern side of Riverside County. Blythe is about 4 miles west of the Arizona-California state line. Back in 1955, what is now Interstate 10 was known as U.S. Route 60-70; and if one were to continue due west along that route for a distance of 48 miles, they would find themselves in the small community of Desert Center, where Adamski and his contingent encountered the landed Venusian scout ship and its pilot Orthon.
In 1955, Blythe had a population of approximately 4,100. Being the hub of the agriculturally-rich Palo Verde Valley, from the air Blythe appears as a vast green-and-white checkerboard of alfalfa and cotton, hugging the Colorado River in the southeast corner of California. The town is encircled by 30 square miles of windswept dune and rugged mountain country, an extension of the Colorado Desert, the 17th largest desert area on Earth. The village of Blythe began one hundred years ago, in 1920, after a consortium of Arizona farmers spent $40 million in diverting the unpredictable waters of the Colorado River, thereby transforming the barren wasteland on the California side into a second “Valley of the Nile.” Blythe’s Main Street in 1955 consisted of a conglomeration of tourist courts, used-car lots and mercantile establishments. However, there were quiet and shady side streets that stretched out toward the lush, green farms and open cattle range to the west.
Investigative journalist Paul C. Benard, who wrote an article about the growing popularity of Blythe and Desert Center as UFO hot spots, “Who Believes in Flying Saucers?” in the July 1955 issue of Bluebook magazine (New York City, New York), provided a rundown on unusual UFO sightings by residents of these two desert communities that took place prior to Adamski’s contact with the Venusian. The journalist began by visiting science classes at Blythe High School, where he conducted a survey among the students, soliciting their opinions about flying saucers. What he discovered was that since 1951 to 1955, 123 of the students had actually testified to seeing the flying saucers over Blythe. And among the student body at large, there was a near-unanimous opinion that the flying saucers were real, physical objects that came from outer space.
Truck Buzzed by Flying Saucer
Frank Hines was a mechanic at the Desert Center Garage when, on the night of 14 June 1952, he claims that he was buzzed by a flying saucer as he was driving a tow truck along Highway 60-70. Apparently, he was spotted by the occupants of a flying saucer, who directed their ship at him, swooping down from the sky and hovering over his truck for the space of about two miles, before the saucer just flew off.
Civil Air Patrol Spotters Befuddled
In mid-July 1952, Tom Jewel, a Civil Air Patrol (CAP) spotter stationed at Blythe, reported four flying saucer sightings throughout a ten-day period. In every instance, there was a flying saucer that rose up in a straight line from behind a nearby mountain range. The object would then turn in a sharp, right-angle and fly across the sky at an estimated speed of 900 miles per hour. Then it would just disappear over Arizona skies off in the eastern horizon.
Within the same ten-day period, another CAP spotter, Frank Draper, also out of Blythe, reported three similar flying saucer sightings.
On the Trail of the Flying Saucers
Our intrepid reporter Paul C. Benard was hot on the trail of the flying saucers. For three weeks in the spring of 1955, he spoke with people from “all walks of life” in the “Flying Saucer Country” of the Colorado Desert and particularly in its two prominent towns of Blythe and Desert Center. He wanted to know everything that the townies of Blythe and Desert Center could recollect and tell him about George Adamski, the interest of the Air Force in their sightings of fireballs and flying saucers, and anything else the residents might have to say about Nordic-looking Venusians wearing tan jumpsuits or arrayed in metallic gear and poking around in the desert.
“I talked to scrawny cowboys in skin-tight Levis and wealthy ranchers in overgrown Stetsons,” said Benard, adding that, “I talked to Mexican and African-American farmhands, desert rats and high school kids.” As to his time in Blythe, the larger of the two towns, the journalist noted that, “I talked to the mayor, the chief of police, the newspaper editor and the manager of the radio station. I talked to the high school principal, the superintendent of schools and the Chamber of Commerce.” But most importantly, Benard emphasized that, “Everyone talked right back.”
Stay Tuned
To discover more of the fascinating flying saucer secrets of the legendary California towns of Blythe and Desert Center, intimately tied to the historical encounter of George Adamski with the Venusian Orthon, don’t miss Part II of this article on this same website. – Cosmic Ray