Rachel is a
census-designated place
A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.
CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...
(CDP) in
Lincoln County, Nevada
Lincoln County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Nevada. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 4,499, making it the fourth-least populous county in Nevada. Its county seat is Pioche, Nevada ...
, United States. As of the
2020 census, it had a population of 48. As the closest settlement to the
Nellis Air Force Range and
Area 51
Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas.
A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force B ...
, Rachel enjoys a modest celebrity status, particularly among aviation enthusiasts and
UFO hunters.
Overview
Rachel is over north of
Las Vegas
Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...
in the
Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range in the western United States. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife ...
, along
Nevada Highway 375 (the "Extraterrestrial Highway") in Nevada. The tiny town receives a substantial number of visitors and tourists, catered to by a small tourist shop, a 12-room motel, and an alien-themed restaurant and bar, the Little A'Le'Inn.
Several unpaved roads near Rachel lead from Highway 375 to the boundary of Area 51.
Rachel's resident population generally numbers around 50, with some of them involved in
ranch
A ranch (from /Mexican Spanish) is an area of landscape, land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of farm. These terms are most often ap ...
ing. Most of the year-round inhabitants live in
mobile home
A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabrication, prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or ...
s. Rachel has never had a
post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
. The children are bused to
Alamo
The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event and military engagement in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna reclaimed the Alam ...
, approximately away, for school. North of the town is the
Quinn Canyon Range that has the ghost town of
Adaven.
History
Early years
Rachel was founded in May 1973 by a local
alfalfa
Alfalfa () (''Medicago sativa''), also called lucerne, is a perennial plant, perennial flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is cultivated as an important forage crop in many countries around the world. It is used for grazing, hay, ...
farmer named D.C. Day.
The community was first known as Tempiute Village, and then later as Sand Springs.
On February 15, 1978, the town was renamed to Rachel after the first baby born in the valley, Rachel Jones (1978–1980). Rachel Jones died on May 24, 1980. In memory of her, Rachel residents created a cemetery and memorial park. Rachel Jones was not buried at Rachel Cemetery.
Electricity arrived in Rachel on March 22, 1978, supplied to the Penoyer Valley by the Penoyer Valley Electric Cooperative.
In 1980, the Rachel Baptist Mission, Rachel's only church, began service in a donated mobile home. Since then, a part-time pastor has come to Rachel for religious services every Sunday morning.
Mid-air collision
On July 10, 1986, at about 4:10 pm, two
F-16s of the
Norwegian Air Force collided in mid-air while participating in
Red Flag exercises near Rachel. One of them crashed within Rachel, only from the edge of a mobile home park. The pilot of the downed fighter had ejected safely before the crash, and the other F-16 made it back to
Nellis Air Force Base
Nellis Air Force Base ("Nellis" colloquialism, colloq.) is a United States Air Force military installation, installation in southern Nevada. Nellis hosts Aerial warfare, air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exerc ...
. The pilot of the downed F-16 suffered only minor injuries, and was transported from the crash site within 20 minutes of the incident by a
U.S. Air Force helicopter.
Recent events
In 1995, the Rachel Baptist Mission moved into a permanent building at the same site that it had occupied previously.
In 2006,
KFC
KFC Corporation, doing business as KFC (an abbreviation of Kentucky Fried Chicken), is an American fast food restaurant chain specializing in fried chicken and chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, it is the world's se ...
created a giant company logo on the ground at the north edge of Rachel and claimed it to be the first logo visible from
space
Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and directions. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions. Modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless ...
. Constructed in early November, it took six days to assemble the 65,000 colored tiles on of flat desert terrain. The logo also had a
hidden message
A hidden message is information that is not immediately noticeable, and that must be discovered or uncovered and interpreted before it can be known. Hidden messages include backwards audio messages, hidden visual messages and symbolic or crypti ...
on the tie area of the logo that featured an impostor colonel holding a sign over his head, reading "Finger Lickin' Good". The logo was removed in mid-2007.
Rachel was featured in an episode of ''
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends'' which covered the UFO subculture. Rachel was mentioned in a two-part episode of ''
The X-Files
''The X-Files'' is an American science fiction on television, science fiction drama (film and television), drama television series created by Chris Carter (screenwriter), Chris Carter. The original series aired from September 10, 1993, to Ma ...
'' entitled "
Dreamland", in which a secret agent aware of the hidden backstory of the show, played by
Michael McKean
Michael John McKean (; born October 17, 1947) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, composer, singer, and musician. Over his career he has received a Grammy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
...
, resided in the town and in which it is portrayed as much larger, and more suburban than it is in reality. It is also a key place in the
first-person shooter
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
game ''
BlackSite: Area 51''.
In 1996, the producers of the movie ''
Independence Day
An independence day is an annual event memorialization, commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or Sovereign state, statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or after the end of a milit ...
'' gave the town a
time capsule
A time capsule is a historic treasure trove, cache of goods or information, usually intended as a deliberate method of communication with future people, and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians. The preservation of holy ...
, which is installed near the inn and is intended to be opened in 2050.
Beginning September 19, 2019, the day before the
Area 51 Raid, people were reported showing up and camping around Rachel in preparation for the raid.
Demographics
As of the census of
2010
The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...
, there were 54 people, 32 households, and 14 families residing in the CDP. The racial makeup was 94.44%
White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
, 3.70%
Asian, and 1.85% from other races. 11.11% were
Hispanic or Latino of any race.
Of the 32 households, 6.25% had children under the age of 18, 25.00% were
married couples
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...
, 6.25% had a male householder with no wife present, and 12.50% had a female householder with no husband present. 56.25% of households were made up of individuals, and 9.38% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 1.69 and the average family size was 2.50.
In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 16.67% ages 15 to 24, 59.26% ages 35 to 64, and 24.07% aged 65 and over. The median age was 52.5 years. 59.26% of the residents were male, and 40.74% were female.
Climate
Rachel has a
cold desert climate
The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...
(
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...
''BWk''), with cold winters, warm summers and a high
diurnal temperature variation
In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high air temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day.
Temperature lag
Temperature lag, also known as thermal inertia, is an important factor in diur ...
. The average annual high temperature is , while the average annual low temperature is . July has the highest average high at and the highest average low at . January has the lowest average high at . December has the lowest average low at . The highest temperature ever recorded was in July and the lowest temperature ever recorded was in January.
Rachel receives of precipitation, with the climate being consistently dry like the rest of the
Great Basin
The Great Basin () is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets to the ocean, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja Californi ...
. July, the wettest month, receives of rainfall on average. September, the driest month, receives of rainfall on average. Rachel receives a few inches of snowfall every winter.
Economy
While a local
tungsten
Tungsten (also called wolfram) is a chemical element; it has symbol W and atomic number 74. It is a metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively in compounds with other elements. It was identified as a distinct element in 1781 and first ...
mine was operative, the community numbered over 500 inhabitants, but after the mine's closing in 1988, the population rapidly dwindled.
D.C. Day, Rachel's founder, died on July 25, 1997. Fay Day, his widow, died on March 13, 2011. She was buried in the Rachel Cemetery on March 19, 2011.
The Area 51 Research Center, a small UFO souvenir shop, closed in the fall of 2001. It has since re-opened in a corner of the Little A'Le'Inn. The community's only gas station went out of business
in the winter of 2006–07, shortly after being acquired by a new owner, an investor from California. The gas station later reopened with gas and a store under the name Alien Cowpoke in October 2020.
Alien Cowpoke, Area 51 Gas
The Alien Cowpoke is a specialty shop located in Rachel, NV (along the Extraterrestrial Highway, in the heart of Area 51). The business was founded in 2020 and is owned, run and managed by UFO, UAP and Extraterrestrial Enthusiasts.
The Little A'Le'Inn
The Little A'Le'Inn, previously the Rachel Bar and Grill,
is a small bar, restaurant and motel located in Rachel, along the
Extraterrestrial Highway. The business has been running for over 20 years and is frequented by visitors to the local
Area 51
Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas.
A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force B ...
. The business has a variety of Area 51- and
UFO-related merchandise for sale such as maps of the area,
poster
A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...
s,
postcard
A postcard or post card is a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard, typically rectangular, intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Non-rectangular shapes may also be used but are rare.
In some places, one can send a postcard f ...
s, and
toy
A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and p ...
s, and offers an "Alien Burger".
The inn opened circa 1989. The original owners were Joe (now deceased) and Pat Travis. In 1991 Joe and Pat wanted something unique for the Bar and Grill because they felt that "Joe and Pat's" was not exciting (according to patron Bruce Hooker). They held a contest won by Bruce Hooker with "A'le'Inn" (a play on "alien"). The current owners of the Little A'Le'Inn are Pat and her daughter Connie.
In popular culture
In ''
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'', the Little A'Le'Inn is referenced. It can be found in Bone County, San Andreas in the vicinity of Area 69, the game's parallel to Area 51, using the name "Lil' Probe'Inn".
References
External links
Official website
{{authority control
Census-designated places in Lincoln County, Nevada
Census-designated places in Nevada
UFO culture in the United States
Populated places established in 1973
1973 establishments in Nevada
Restaurants in Nevada
Hotels in Nevada
Area 51