Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
"Cows don't eat sand."
That is the line Judy Messoline gave when her cattle operation in the San Luis Valley went under. Most ranchers would have packed it in, moved to Alamosa, taken a desk job. Judy built a UFO watchtower instead. Opened it in May 2000, right off Colorado Highway 17, the stretch locals started calling the Cosmic Highway. Roughly three miles north of Hooper, a town so small you will blink and miss it, sitting up at about 7,600 feet.
So here is the thing. The 2026 release of the U.S. government's UFO files is coming, and Judy's son Larry, who runs the place now, is expecting a wave of people. If you have ever wanted to do this trip, this is the fall to time it.
Admission is two dollars a person or five dollars a car. That is not a typo. Primitive camping runs ten bucks a night. I mean, you cannot get a coffee in Denver for that, and here you get a whole cosmic pilgrimage.
The setup is charmingly no-frills. A 10-foot observation platform. A little stucco dome shaped like a flying saucer that doubles as the gift shop. A primitive campground where you can post up and stare at the sky. That is it. And honestly that is the whole point. Nobody is upselling you a VIP alien package.
The gift shop is staffed Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the site itself is open seven days a week. And here is the detail most people miss. The recommended UFO-viewing window is late. Like 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. late. So if you show up at noon expecting to see something streak across the sky, you are doing it wrong. You come for the platform in daylight, you camp, you wait up.
Since 2000, more than 30,000 people have made the drive. Summer of 2022 alone pulled about 5,000 visitors. Back in 2004, Judy said she was getting 75 people a day. Seventy-five. To a stucco dome in the middle of the valley.
And the sightings are real, at least as far as the logbook goes. As of 2023, visitors had reported 163 UFO sightings from the site. Judy herself says she has personally seen 27. Now, I am not here to tell you what those were. That is the beauty of the place. It is judgment-free. You want to believe, believe. You want to just camp under the darkest sky in Colorado, do that too.
Below the platform there is a healing garden, sometimes called the vortex garden. The valley is said to have two documented energy vortexes, and people leave trinkets and little offerings down there. Rings, photos, small stuff that meant something to somebody. Walk through it slow. It hits different than you would expect.
But the thing that stopped me cold is inside the museum. They have the preserved skeleton of Snippy. Snippy was an Appaloosa mare who died in 1967, and her death was bloodless and strange enough that it became the world's first globally publicized case of UFO-related animal mutilation. First one. Ever. And the bones are right there in Hooper, Colorado. You cannot make this up.
That is what I love about this whole corner of the state. The San Luis Valley has been the epicenter for this stuff for decades, long before it was cool to talk about on cable news.
The Watchtower is about 30 miles from Great Sand Dunes National Park, which means you can do both in one swing. Sand dunes by day, saucer-watching by night. That is a genuinely great Colorado weekend.
For food and a real bed, Alamosa is your basecamp. It is a 30 to 40 minute drive, and it has the restaurants and lodging the Watchtower does not. So the play is simple. Sleep or eat in Alamosa, drive out to the valley, stargaze until 3 a.m. if you can hang.
Denver7 put the Watchtower on their list of Colorado's most unique attractions on September 3, 2026, right as summer was winding down. And keep in mind, with the federal files landing next year, the quiet version of this place has a short shelf life. Larry is bracing for crowds for a reason.
Real quick real estate side note, because I cannot help myself. The San Luis Valley is one of the last genuinely cheap corners of Colorado, and land down there still trades for a fraction of anything on the Front Range. Whether that stays true as the alien tourism ticks up is anybody's guess. But right now it is one of the quietest, darkest, most affordable places in the state.
Judy Messoline could have sold the ranch and disappeared. Instead she looked at a pasture that could not grow grass and decided the sky was the better crop. Twenty-five years and 163 sightings later, that bet is still paying out.
Two dollars. Highway 17. Bring a jacket and stay up past midnight.