The only landmark for about 40 miles on a barren stretch of highway is a mailbox battered by time and desert gusts. It’s known as the Black Mailbox, although it’s actually a dingy white.

Over the years, hundreds of people have converged here in south-central Nevada to photograph the box—the size of a small television, held up by a chipped metal pole. They camp next to it. They try to break into it. They debate its significance or simply huddle by it for hours, staring into the night.

Some think the mailbox is linked to nearby Area 51, a military installation and purported hotbed of extraterrestrial activity. At the very least, they consider the box a prime magnet for flying saucers. A few visitors have claimed to have encountered celestial oddities. But most enjoy uneventful nights at the mailbox, situated between the towns of Alamo and Rachel.

This night, Lester Arnold, a 59-year-old industrial mechanic, is in Rachel offering to show visitors Mailbox Road or the state-christened Extraterrestrial Highway. He has travelled from Declo, Idaho, for the annual UFO Friendship Conference Camp Out. A few years ago at the mailbox, Arnold says, he saw a fireball-like object shoot over the mountains, stop and shrink until it vanished. The cows grazing alongside it, conspiracy theorists whisper, are mounted with spy cameras.

The box is made of quarter-inch-thick bulletproof metal, and its door is clamped shut with a Master Lock. Its owner, say the black letters printed on its side, is STEVE MEDLIN, HC 61, BOX 80. Visitors have added bumper stickers and their own musings: “Trust no one” and “I am the last alien” among them. “It’s become this mecca,” says a Las Vegas man who’s admiring the weathered box.

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