The city of Roswell boasts a population of nearly 50,000 residents, a healthy economy, and a reputation for being a haven for UFO enthusiasts. The most famous of all UFO and alien stories is that of Roswell, made legend in movies, television shows and hundreds of books.

Because of all the media attention, documentaries, books, papers, TV programs, videos, motion pictures, etc., Roswell has become a household name symbolizing flying saucers. Ironically, Roswell is most famous for an incident that happened more than 50 years ago: the alleged crash of an alien spacecraft in 1947. Debate about the Roswell incident has gone on for years.

There is a lot of speculation and belief about aliens. The city of Roswell, among others, aims to cash in on it.

How did it all start? Eyewitnesses saw something from the sky crash. A few hours later, someone issued a press release stating emphatically that Roswell had in its possession an alien spacecraft, a flying saucer. These claims emanated from a number of alleged eyewitnesses at the crash site or at Roswell AAFB.

It made the papers, but as soon as the military got wind of it, they moved in to correct the news reports. The Military announced that the crash was officially the wreckage of a downed weather balloon that had been misidentified by officers at Roswell. But, according to the report, the cover story blew up in the government's face, as reporters flocked to the site.

Roswell represents a controversy that extends far beyond the relatively narrow confines of the so called UFO community. Conspiracies began to evolve from this event, and citizens of Roswell have come forward and claimed that they were coerced into silence.

Many believe that Roswell was a massive Government cover-up. A number of books have been written about the incident, and it is considered by UFO buffs to be the biggest cover-up in US Today, the controversy involving the mysterious crash, the alleged recovery of alien beings and the presumption of a massive military cover-up rages on. Some are inclined to think it was some exotic military experiment gone awry, while others feel we were truly visited by aliens.

Others still claim there is zero credible evidence to support a crash of alien spacecraft anywhere, much less in Roswell, NM.Theorists believe that Government is covering up the crash of an extraterrestrial spaceship. They say that the degree of engineering sophistication found at the Roswell crash site had never been seen in this country.

Why Cover Up? In short, maintaining national security, or at least the appearance of it would be motive enough to hiding the events of Roswell. Others feel the religious, economic, and social structures were reason enough to hide the truth.

Still others feel that the motives of the government were less pure and that they had been testing some top secret military equipment and did not want other countries to learn of the weapons and jets existence.

The interest of the public was aroused and the Roswell incident has been at the forefront of Ufology ever since. Opponents say that the arguments being made against Roswell simply to not stand up under close scrutiny. Others think that the myth that now surrounds the Roswell event bares little resemblance to the actual facts.