Area 51 Was Once Called "Watertown." Inside the North Country's UFO Files

A woman in Anchorage, Alaska, says she watched something she can't explain hang in the sky for three minutes this summer. This week her photos went around the world.

Sara Jane Osborn was photographing a rainbow from a parked car near Anchorage's Sixth Avenue around 10:13 p.m. on June 15. That far north in June, it was still broad daylight. Above a distant tree line she spotted a dark, black-and-silver shape with tentacle-like strands hanging below it. The strands seemed to move on their own while the body hovered and turned side to side. Then, she said, "it was there, and then it wasn't."

It's the kind of story that makes people look up. Here in the North Country, people have been looking up, and reporting what they saw, for more than 70 years. The Air Force investigated some of it. Two cases were never explained. And one of the strangest threads in UFO lore runs straight through Watertown.

Wait. Area 51 was called "Watertown"?

Yes, and this part is real. Area 51, the secret Nevada base at the center of nearly every UFO legend in America, has long carried the nickname "Watertown."

The CIA's own history says so. It was where the agency's U-2 spy planes were trucked in to be reassembled and tested in the 1950s, and in the agency's words the planes were "transported to Watertown." Some government records even list Watertown as part of a township in Lincoln County, Nev.

Why Watertown? The story told for decades is that the base was named for the hometown of the man running the CIA. Allen Dulles, who led the agency from 1953 to 1961 while it built the U-2 program, was born in Watertown, N.Y., in 1893, the son of a Presbyterian minister.

The CIA calls that a rumor. Its records point to something much less dramatic: rain. When runoff from the surrounding mountains flooded the dry lakebed the runway sat on, project managers called the place the "Watertown Strip." Lockheed designer Kelly Johnson had his own name for the site, "Paradise Ranch," which got shortened to "the Ranch."

Either way, the most famous UFO base in the world has shared a name with ours for 70 years. On Aug. 1, 1955, the first U-2 lifted off the Watertown Strip by accident during a high-speed taxi test. And that plane has its own place in UFO history. A 1997 CIA history said officials who worked on the program later estimated that U-2 and follow-on spy-plane flights accounted for more than half of the UFO reports made in the United States from the late 1950s through the 1960s.

What the Alaska witness saw

Back in Anchorage, Osborn's first thought was that a mosquito had landed near her phone's lens. It hadn't. She took a burst of photos and some video, and after about three minutes the object was gone.

She and her husband, Pete, searched a nearby park for someone flying a kite, then drove toward Arctic Valley and looked for another half hour. They found no one, and no one else has come forward as a witness. The object had appeared to be in the direction of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, home to Air Force F-22 fighter jets. Nothing ties it to the base, and Osborn hasn't ruled out a drone. "It was very clearly not a kite in its movements," she said, and summed it up this way: "Only God and the government know what it is."

So far there has been no comment from the base, the FAA or the Pentagon's UFO office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. It isn't known whether she reported it to any of them, or why the photos surfaced nearly five months after the sighting.

So what could it have been?

The best-known "jellyfish" UFO before this one was an infrared military video recorded over Al Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq in 2017 and released to the public in 2024. In September 2025 the Pentagon's UFO office concluded with high confidence that it was a cluster of fully and partially inflated balloons.

That matters here. Balloons trailing ribbons or strings catch different gusts of wind, which can make the strands look like they are moving on their own. A drone carrying something is another possibility.

One thing it almost certainly wasn't is a rocket "space jellyfish." Those glowing plumes appear only when a dark sky lets sunlight light up rocket exhaust high above, and Anchorage was still in daylight.

The North Country's own UFO files

Nothing shaped like a jellyfish turns up in the public record here. Strange lights over Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties are another matter.

In the 1950s, the radar crews of the 655th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron at the old Watertown Air Force Station checked many of these reports against their scopes. Those files are now part of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, held by the National Archives. Almost every one ended with an ordinary answer.

The government has been opening more of its UFO files this year. The Department of Defense released seven batches between May and October. None of the files we could check names Fort Drum, Watertown or the St. Lawrence.

The two that were never explained

Camp Drum, September 1952. Eight soldiers reported an object about 20 feet across, throwing off red-orange sparks, that circled and hovered over the post for about half an hour. Officers came up from Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome to question the men. The Air Force declined to comment, and the report was classified confidential. No explanation has ever been made public.

Oswegatchie, April 1994. Around 8:15 on a spring evening, at least four people, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent, called in reports of an object with rows of red lights dropping into a cornfield. Dozens of volunteers searched, along with a Fort Drum Army helicopter carrying infrared equipment. They found nothing. Local fire officials said it didn't look like a conventional aircraft, and the airports in Ogdensburg and Burlington had no radio traffic to explain it.

The usual suspects in our skies

Most North Country sightings have a local explanation, and most of them involve the military, a neighbor across the border or something in orbit.

What about the Thompson Park "vortex"?

You may have heard that Watertown has its own "Area 51" in Thompson Park, a teleportation vortex or a portal. We looked. There is no record behind it beyond retold internet posts. The real Area 51 connection is the one above, and it is stranger than the legend.

Seen something?

Most strange lights have an ordinary answer, and a few minutes of checking will usually find it. If it doesn't, we want to hear about it.

Common questions

Why is Area 51 called Watertown?

Area 51 has long carried the nickname "Watertown." A popular story says it was named for the birthplace of CIA Director Allen Dulles, who was born in Watertown, N.Y., but the CIA calls that a rumor. Its records say the name came from floodwater: when mountain runoff flooded the dry lakebed, project managers called it the "Watertown Strip."

Was Allen Dulles from Watertown, New York?

Yes. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, was born in Watertown, N.Y., in 1893. The agency built the U-2 spy plane program, which was tested at Area 51, while he led it.

Has anyone seen a UFO over Fort Drum?

Yes. In September 1952, eight soldiers at what was then Camp Drum reported a sparking object about 20 feet across that hovered for half an hour, and it was never explained. Later reports near the post were usually traced to meteors or to flares fired during training.

What are the orange lights over Fort Drum and Lake Ontario?

Most often they're military illumination or gunnery flares from Fort Drum, or Canadian search-and-rescue flares over Lake Ontario. Flares drift slowly downward, can be seen for miles and then go out.

Which North Country county has the most UFO reports?

St. Lawrence County. A count of public reports from 2001 to 2015 found 78 there, compared with 44 in Jefferson County.

What was the Alaska "jellyfish" UFO?

It's still unidentified. An Anchorage woman photographed a dark object with dangling, moving strands for about three minutes on June 15, 2026. Balloons trailing ribbons and a drone are both possible explanations, and no agency has commented.

How do I report a UFO sighting?

The National UFO Reporting Center takes public reports. If something is flying low near an airport or looks like a safety risk, call local police. You can also send it to ClickNNY.