Late one April evening in 1964, State policeman Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeder on a roadway a mile southwest of Socorro when he spotted a blue flash of light emanating from the nearby hills. Aware that a mining shed in the general area contained dynamite, Zamora broke off the chase and went to investigate.
Traveling through rough roads, Zamora finally gained a hilltop view and saw, to his amazement, an egg shaped metal object in a draw, standing on slim legs. Beside the object were two small humans, or possibly large children, who appeared startled to see him. As he proceeded on foot into the draw, he heard a roar and saw the object rise from the ground on a blue flame and shoot off to the west at an altitude of less than 20 feet. The stunned police officer examined the landing area, found still smoldering plants, fused sand and indentations from the legs of the craft.
At the same time, witnesses nearby – including two tourists traveling through, a gas-station owner and a young girl on a hike – independently reported hearing a roaring noise, blue flames and a small oval object traveling at high speed through the air. To this day, it is the most highly documented UFO sighing in Blue Book history but it remains on the record as unsolved.
The next day, 35 year old Orlando Gallegos of Santa Fe, drove to La Madera to visit his father. Just after midnight, he stepped outside the house to shoo away some horses when he spotted a bright metal, windowless, egg-shaped object, about as long as a telephone pole and 14 or so feet in diameter, sitting on a graveled area about 200 yards away. The object displayed a ring of blue flames emitting from jets around the bottom of the craft but was noiseless. He saw no one around it.
He returned to the house, badly shaken, and told his family but no one would venture out to see it, although Gallegos went out twice more to look at it again. The next morning, the object was gone and Gallegos drove to the nearest police station (in Espanola) and reported the sighting. State police officers – now aware of the Socorro sighting – went to La Madera and found the ground in the area still smoldering and indentations in the ground.
In Santa Fe, a day later, the city's police chief, A.B. Martinez, issued a formal warning to citizens to stay away from any mysterious objects.
The following morning, hundreds of Santa Feans turned out to watch an unidentified flying object traveling in the sky over the northwest part of the city. Witnesses described the object as multi-colored and “V” shaped like a plumb bob used by surveyors. Some claimed they saw flames as well. State and city police were flooded with calls about the mysterious sighting.
As it happened, earlier that day, a celebration at the Casa Solana Shopping Center included a large cluster of colorful gas-filled balloons tied on strings at the bottom, forming a “V” shape. Before they could be stopped, a group of small boys managed to cut the balloons loose and, still in a cluster, the balloons floated away. Once the police learned of the boys' mischief, no further investigation of the colorful UFO over Santa Fe was conducted.
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