Week of November 9, 2026 • Project Blue Book • Case file: Socorro, New Mexico, April 1964
Socorro — the landing that left traces
On the evening of April 24, 1964, at about 5:45 p.m., Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora broke off a speeding-car pursuit to investigate a roar and a flame south of town. In a shallow arroyo he found a smooth, white, egg-shaped object resting on the desert floor on small legs. He reported two small figures standing beside it.
New Mexico State Police Sergeant Sam Chavez arrived within minutes and found the physical traces Zamora described: burned brush and four rectangular depressions in the soil, measured and photographed by investigators in the days that followed. The Army, the FBI, and Project Blue Book’s scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek — who visited the site in person that August — all investigated. No conventional vehicle could be placed at the site.
Project Blue Book’s record card marks the case “Unknown” and comments: “Effort to date cannot place vehicle at site. Case carried as UNIDENTIFIED pending additional data.”
The case file runs to 168 images in the National Archives: Zamora’s account, the Army and Air Force field reports, Hynek’s notes, the correspondence with aerospace firms checking whether any lunar-module project matched, and the press clippings that followed. It is one of the 701 cases Blue Book carried as unidentified when the program closed.
What “unidentified” means: the Air Force investigated and could not identify it. That is all it means — and it is enough. It is not a finding of alien origin.
Official source: National Archives catalog — “Socorro, New Mexico, April 1964” (NAID 302532129), Record Group 341
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