Storm Area 51: 5 years later, could Alienstock return?

With the Storm Area 51-born Alienstock festival reaching its fifth anniversary, organizers of the inaugural event are eyeing a potential return visit by extraterrestrial fans.

In 2019 a simple Facebook post made by California resident Matty Roberts led to thousands of people expressing interest in storming the gates of Area 51.

The idea was to gather as many people as possible at the back gate of Area 51 at 3 a.m. Sept. 20, 2019, to attempt to make it inside the mysterious facility in search of proof aliens exist.

After drawing worldwide attention ahead of the planned “storming,” multiple events spawned from the idea, with two in rural areas of Nevada, Rachel (Alienstock) and Hiko (Area 51 Basecamp), and one in downtown Las Vegas. Beer giant Anheuser-Busch even produced a limited edition alien-themed Bud Light can, distributed in Nevada and surrounding states, to mark the occasion.

Instead of a major, potentially dangerous, occasion at the back gate of Area 51, about 100 people showed up in the early hours of Sept. 20, 2019, for the planned “storming.” Many in attendance wore alien- and space-related costumes, creating more of a social media opportunity for attendees than an actual attempt to break into Area 51. That turned out to be a smart move because law enforcement officials were on hand at the gate and in the distance just after the gate, ensuring nobody stepped out of line.

Return of Alienstock?

Pat Travis, who is the mother of Connie West, owner of the Little A’Le’Inn, said they hope to hold another Alienstock next year. The Little A’Le’Inn still holds an active trademark on the Alienstock name, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records.

“We’re trying to get finances and everything else to get another one put together, maybe next year,” Travis told the Review-Journal during a Thursday phone interview.

To commemorate the fifth anniversary a small group of about 25 Alienstock attendees are meeting this weekend at the Little A’Le’Inn.

“They’ve been doing it every year since that (Alienstock),” Travis said.

The unknown

The potential for thousands of people to converge on a small desert town had area officials in 2019 worried about infrastructure and the well-being of those who might attend. It also caused Nye and Lincoln counties to declare states of emergency ahead of the event.

Eric Holt, emergency manager for Lincoln County, where Rachel is located, said that after first catching wind of the Facebook post, he and the county didn’t pay much attention to it. But once the post started gaining momentum, with more than 1 million people liking it, county leadership started to think something might actually happen.

“The more traction it got and it caught national attention, it became a situation where it’s like, ‘Man, is this really going to happen,’” Holt said.

The uncertainty of what could unfold marked the toughest part for Lincoln County as officials planned for the event. Because the county’s population is very small, they didn’t have the resources to handle a large influx of people, Storm Area 51, or otherwise.

Even after Roberts and others pulled back on the potential to storm the gates and focused more on hosting a festival called Alienstock, only to pull out later for the Las Vegas event, Holt said the damage was already done and they had to plan for the unknown.

“How many of them will actually come, how many won’t,” Holt said. “So it made it hard and we set these trigger points on if we saw a certain amount of traffic beforehand … we were really just throwing darts, just trying to make sense of it.”

Holt only held the position of emergency manager for the county for a year at the time of the Storm Area 51 movement and he said it was his first big event to deal with, “We did the best we could.”

Over a dozen agencies ended up being stationed at a command post about 15 miles away from the Little A’Le’Inn where Alienstock was taking place and about 25 miles from the Alien Research Center in Hiko, where Area 51 Basecamp occurred. Between the main command post and smaller set ups located near the two sites, at peak there were 350 law enforcement personnel and first responders.

What happened in the desert

Over the three days of Alienstock a few thousand people showed up to party at the Little A’Le’Inn and surrounding 30 acres, with the majority of attendees camping in tents, their cars or in RVs on-site.

The event featured food trucks, vendors and small act bands, who mainly performed on a wooden stage built by event attendees. The event was largely a success because of the community nature of those who took part in the festival.

“I think it was everybody working together… and that made it amazing,” Travis said. “We still look back and wonder how we did it.”

The Area 51 Basecamp event in Hiko at the Alien Research Center had booked acclaimed DJ Paul Oakenfold to perform and had high hopes for a large crowd. After only a few dozen people took in Oakenfold’s set the first night of the event, the second night was initially called off, but was then carried out as a free event, instead of charging the original $51 ticket fee.

Costly event

The monumental task for the small, rural Lincoln County ended up costing them $200,000, after initial hopes of the state supplementing up to half of the cost.

“We tracked all of our costs, the state helped send some planning resources and to help coordinate other resources that we requested,” Holt said. “At the end of the day when we put the packet together and sent it to the state, ultimately the governor and the interim finance committee ended up denying our request.”

That amount was a big dent to Lincoln County’s budget, with Holt calling the situation “tough,” and said looking back if they had to do it all over again, he would’ve planned for the event the same way, since there were so many unknowns.

“It was tough to have them deny it after the fact,” Holt said. “We’ve moved on and five years later we’re doing OK and just trucking along.”

If West pulls the trigger and plans to host another Alienstock in the future, Holt said Lincoln County officials would likely not approve one to occur, after the costs incurred by the 2019 event.

Nye County, which is home to a separate gate to Area 51, exercised caution and mobilized crews in the event groups were to gather on their side of the mythical area. Nye County spent $393,924 on managing the potential outcome of Storm Area 51, of which none was supplemented by the state.

“The cost to the county was incremental and not all at once,” Nye County spokesman Arnold Knightly said in an email. “The money was replenished to the public safety departments impacted through budget augmentation from contingency funds. There were no direct cuts to any personnel or services, but some positions may have remained unfilled as a result.”

‘Something I’d rather forget’

Now semi-retired, Frank DiMaggio, an event producer, along with Roberts and the group Hidden Sound LLC, looks back at the madness and wishes it never happened at all, especially with the aftermath leading to a lawsuit filed by West.

DiMaggio said West initially reached out to them for help with Alienstock, and after seeing the lack of infrastructure in the rural town of Rachel, they cautioned her not to do it, citing safety concerns. Then with DiMaggio and Roberts shifting their plans to the Las Vegas Events Center, the two sides faced off in court after the fact.

“It’s something that I’d probably rather forget at this point,” DiMaggio told the Review-Journal. “It was a long legal battle … I kind of just went with the flow. I haven’t heard from Matty Roberts or Brock Daly, the two guys that ran it. They kinda disappeared.”

After airing their concerns regarding hosting Alienstock in Rachel, DiMaggio, Roberts and Daly struck a deal with the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center to host an event sponsored by Bud Light, dubbed the Bud Light Area 51 Celebration.

“It was 11,000 people with nine days’ notice,” DiMaggio said. It was huge for that kind of event, absolutely, but out in the middle of the desert, like a mini Burning Man.”

The two sides settled their lawsuit in favor of West, with part of the judgment stating all parties involved must keep the outcome confidential.

After the success of the Las Vegas event, DiMaggio and crew had plans to host similar events in other cities across the U.S., but months after the initial alien madness, the coronavirus pandemic began, halting the momentum created by the initial event.

“We had 17 events booked and they all got canceled,” DiMaggio said. “COVID kind of took all the kick out of it.”