Of course this is pretty small-time compared to Roswell, New Mexico, whose official tourism site is designed to evoke a 1950s B-movie poster, thanks to the 1947 event where an alien ship crashed into the ground near that town, and the government covered it all up and did alien autopsies or something, because they were afraid of nerds with beards finding out the truth.

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Roswell has a UFO museum as well as an annual UFO festival, and unlike Fyffe's all-in-good-fun festival, this one is for people to talk for serious about real UFOs. This festival is funded by the city itself, which put $150,000 into it in 2010.



"Why won't anyone take our theories seriously?"

Unlike Fyffe, apparently Roswell actually had a history and a culture, and some of the citizens were against cheesing out their town as Alien Disneyland but I guess they're screwed.

It could be worse. At least the phenomena they're building their image around is something some people actually believe exists, even if it's mostly crazy people. Meanwhile, Riverside, Iowa, is building its appeal around being the birthplace of Captain Kirk.

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Other than that giant off-brand Enterprise (lawsuits, you know), they also renamed their annual "Riverfest" to "Trek Fest," named all their shops after Star Trek puns, and sell $3 vials of dirt from the exact site Kirk was (will be?) born. So they actually previously had a festival celebrating their community or heritage or whatever, and now it's celebrating a fictional sci-fi universe whose only connection to the town comes from a throwaway line and a fan petition.