The owners of the mailbox, Steve and Glenda Medlin, moved in 1973 to a ranch in Tikaboo Valley, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas. There was no talk of aliens and no home mail delivery.

A few years later, a local tungsten quarry reopened. Some miners moved to a trailer park near the Medlins; it grew into the town of Rachel. Postal carriers began delivery, and the couple put up a common black rural mailbox about six miles from their home, near Highway 375.

In 1989, a man named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television station that he had worked with alien spacecraft at nearby Nellis Air Force Base. Soon, tourists descended on Rachel. The mailbox acquired a cult-like following.

UFO tourists left messages in the mailbox for the aliens. “They were waiting for the aliens to abduct them, and they were anxious to meet them... We’d just shake our heads,” says Glenda Medlin, who long ago stopped reading the notes. “It was so asinine.”

Some people opened the couple’s mail, hoping to intercept classified correspondence. Some camped at the mailbox—for weeks, in some cases. A few shot the mailbox, leaving holes in the Medlins’ bills and junk mail. That was too much for the ranchers.

Glenda Medlin doesn’t remember when her husband swapped out the black mailbox for the larger white bulletproof one, but an online posting pegs the date as March 27, 1996.

“They were waiting for the aliens to abduct them, and they were anxious to meet them... We’d just shake our heads”

... contd.