Rachel, Nevada

Rachel
—  Unincorporated community  —
Rachel Location within the state of Nevada
Coordinates: 37°38′48″N 115°44′43″W
Country	United States
State	Nevada
County	Lincoln
Time zone	Pacific (PST) (UTC-8)
• Summer (DST)	PDT (UTC-7)
ZIP codes
FIPS code
GNIS feature ID

Rachel, as seen from Highway 375, looking northwest

Little A'Le'Inn Bar, Restaurant & Motel

Tow truck with "crashed flying saucer"

Rachel is an unincorporated portion of Lincoln County, Nevada. As the closest habitation to the Nellis Air Force Range and Area 51, Rachel enjoys a modest celebrity, particularly among aviation enthusiasts and UFO hunters.

The town lies approximately three hours drive north of Las Vegas along Nevada Highway 375 (the "Extraterrestrial Highway"), which has an unofficial "speed limit" of Warp 7. The tiny town receives a modest number of visitors interested in the U.S. government's secret doings, to whom a small tourist shop, 3-room motel, and an alien-themed restaurant and bar, the Little A'Le'Inn are available.

Several unpaved roads near Rachel lead from Highway 375 across the terrain to the boundary of Area 51 [1].

Rachel's population generally hovers around 80 inhabitants, some involved in ranching. The town was originally established as a tungsten mining town, but the mines pulled out circa 1988. Most of the year-round inhabitants live in mobile homes.

Recent events

In 2006 KFC 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. "[It] marked the official debut of a massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000-plus KFC restaurants in over 80 countries over the next few years." Constructed in early November, it took six days to assemble the 65,000 colored tiles on 87,500 square feet (8,130 m²) of flat desert terrain. The logo also had a hidden message on the tie area of the logo that featured an impostor colonel holding a sign over his head, reading "Finger Lickin' Good". Although the logo was removed in mid-2007, it is still visible on Google Earth.

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 entitled Dreamland, in which a secret agent aware of the hidden backstory of the show, played by Michael McKean, resided in the town. It is also a key place in the first person shooter style game titled BlackSite: Area 51.

The producers of the movie Independence Day gave the town a time capsule, which is installed near the inn.

In 2001 the Area 51 Research Center, one of two local businesses catering to Area 51 tourists, closed their doors for good. In late 2006, the gas station and convenience store closed, along with the trailer park. Since then, the Little A'Le'Inn is the only remaining local business providing services to tourists. There are occasional rumors of a mine re-opening or a new business opening in the area, but none of these plans has materialized.

In 2010, a new kind of visitor began frequenting Rachel: geocachers. Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunt where players use GPS-enabled devices to locate hidden containers, called geocaches (pronounced gee-oh-cash). Approximately 1000 geocaches were placed along Highway 375 (a.k.a, the E.T. Highway) in a 'power trail'. After only 6 months of being active, the majority of the geocache containers were removed by the NDOT due to safety hazards. The rooms at the Little Ale'Inn in Rachel went from being booked up for months in advance to be completely empty and unbooked in a matter of days, halting almost all business to the inn. Then, after approximately 5 months of re-planning and communication with the NDOT, a new, bigger power trail of 1500 geocaches was placed along the E.T. Highway in late August 2011. These new geocaches adhered to the NDOT's safety standards, with vehicles being required to pull completely over the white line, and most geocaches being about 50-100 feet from the road. At the inn in Rachel, business resumed within days. It is considered bragging rights by many in the geocaching community to have geocached the E.T. Highway, and has been called the 'Mecca of the geocaching world'.

Education

The children are bused to Alamo, Nevada for school.

External links

• Official website
• Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce
• KFC logo in Rachel, as seen from space
• Map of roads to Area 51