[CNI News thanks Tim Edwards for sending us videotape and newspaper accounts of UFO activity in southern Colorado.]
(March 1, 1997) -- Tim Edwards of Salida, Colorado, tells CNI News of a new UFO sighting reported February 18, 1997 in southern Colorado. Jim Roberts and his son Jeff were driving from Pueblo to their home in Howard, Colorado when they saw, just before 6:00 pm, a "large golden-yellow cigar-shaped object, viewed two miles east of Canyon City, Colorado, to the west over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 500 feet over a high peak."
"This would put it about 25 miles away (from the viewers) and in the eastern part of the San Luis Valley," Edwards said. Jim Roberts was driving with his car headlights on, but the object was high enough to be illuminated by the setting sun and was viewed for two to three minutes before an oncoming weather front obscured it. Roberts took one photo of the object through his windshield.
According to Edwards, "The very excited pair said it was at a 15 to 20 degree tilt, [looked] about 2 inches long, wide as a pencil, did not move at all in reference to the peak, and was a totally beautiful and spectacular sight."
Edwards himself has become something of a UFO celebrity since shooting a remarkable daylight video of a large, luminous cigar or "pencil-shaped" object over his hometown of Salida, Colorado on August 27, 1995. That footage, and Edwards himself, has been featured on numerous television news stories as well as "Sightings," "Paranormal Borderline" and similar programs. Several expert video analysts have declared the object in Edwards' video to be very large (over 2,000 feet long), self-luminous and probably metallic.
Numerous other UFOs have been reported throughout the region in recent years by Edwards and many other witnesses.
An article in the Crestone Eagle newspaper (vol. 8, no. 2 of February, 1997) of nearby Crestone, Colorado, alluded to a recently disclosed agreement between the U.S. military and the Forest Service concerning military training exercises in the region. According to the article by Pat Richmond, an organization called Open Space Alliance "has discovered an Inter-Agency Agreement between the Department of Defense and the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the National Forest Service (Dept. of Agriculture) that could explain 'strange lights' and other puzzling 'phenomena' that periodically appear in night skies of the San Luis Valley and surrounding areas.
"Contrary to media coverage promoting speculation about UFOs," Richmond wrote, "some residents in the SLV, including retired military personnel familiar with Pentagon activities and procedures, have long believed that most night sky 'sightings' are connected to military operations such as experimental testing of prototype craft, routine training maneuvers, or special aircraft used to provide coordinates for tracking and/or retrieving missiles launched from Ft. Wingate or White Sands."
Not so fast, cautions Tim Edwards. The experts who have analyzed his videotape all agree that the object seen in August, 1995 bears no resemblance to any known military aircraft in shape, size or behavior. It was visible for more than an hour, hovering and darting around in the daylight sky. It was seen by eyewitnesses in widely separated parts of Colorado from Salida to Grand Junction. It has not been explained by anyone.
Not only that, but a similar sighting was reported over Salida well before the Pentagon could take credit for bizarre aircraft -- on September 7, 1917, to be exact. "Rev. and Mrs. Oakley, Mr. and Mrs. F.C. Woody and family, C.F. Bode and family are among those who have watched this mysterious light with interest, and none of them are prepared to say what it is," the Salida Record stated. "Rev. Oakley, who examined it with a telescope one night, said he could discern an object which appeared to be a wheel about three feet in diameter, and while the wheel seemed to revolve or move about, various colored lights appeared."
No one seems to know why Salida and the San Luis Valley area have so much UFO activity, but the sightings show no sign of slowing down.
Tim Edwards, 43, owner of a restaurant called the Patio Pancake Place, is convinced that he was allowed to videotape an extraterrestrial spacecraft so that he could help to convince others that such things exist. Prior to August 27, 1995, he had no interest in the subject. But that day turned his world upside down.
"The first three weeks, I was an emotional wreck, "he said. "Everything else seemed so trivial."
Original file name: CNI - Colorado Cylinder Siting
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