LONNIE ZAMORA INCIDENT SITE
Field — Socorro, New Mexico
Status: Natural site · Access: Open to public
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/lonnie-zamora-incident-site-socorro-new-mexico/

The 1964 police-officer landing case that Blue Book couldn’t close.

On April 24, 1964, Socorro patrolman Lonnie Zamora reported a landed egg-shaped craft and two small figures in a gully south of town—physical traces (burn marks, landing depressions) were documented the same day. Project Blue Book listed it as unexplained; the site is marked with a historical sign on the town’s south side.

Lonnie Zamora left a speeder to chase an explosion. On April 24, 1964, the Socorro police sergeant was pursuing a car on U.S. 85 when he heard a roar and saw blue-orange flame descending toward an arroyo south of town — near a dynamite shack, he thought. He abandoned the chase, fought his patrol car up the gravel hill, and saw what he took for an overturned car: a white, egg-shaped object on girder legs in the gully, with two small figures in white coveralls beside it. One turned toward him, seemingly startled.
He radioed it in as a possible accident and drove closer — a hundred feet away when the roaring resumed and flame came from beneath the object. Thinking it would explode, he ran, bumping his leg, losing his glasses, shielding behind the patrol car — then looked up to watch it rise twenty feet, silent, the flame gone, a red insignia he later drew for investigators visible on its side. It flew away southwest.
What he left behind was physical — smoldering brush, shallow landing-gear depressions, prints other officers documented that afternoon. Project Blue Book investigated and listed the case 'unknown' — the most respected single-witness UFO case in the record, held up by Zamora's reputation as a sober, skeptical cop. The explanations proposed — a lunar lander test from White Sands, a hoax by New Mexico Tech students — have never quite closed it.
The Socorro site is the archive's unknown file — the 1964 arroyo where Officer Zamora watched an egg-shaped craft on legs lift off on blue flame, leaving scorched brush and landing prints that Blue Book never explained.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
The Lonnie Zamora incident site is the archive's Blue Book file — the Socorro arroyo where a police sergeant's April 24, 1964 sighting of a landed egg-shaped craft produced physical traces and the Air Force's 'unknown' classification.
A case that stayed unknown keeps its arroyo — the file's suggestion being that Socorro's hold is the officer: Zamora's credibility, the landing depressions, the burned brush — the evidence that made Blue Book write 'unknown.'

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Media reported] ufo activity: A police officer reported a landed craft, two figures, and physical traces documented same-day. The figure answers to Socorro UFO in the retellings. Open country keeps its stories differently — Lonnie Zamora incident site in Socorro, New Mexico files its reports in weather and distance. Media accounts carried the story further than the evidence ever did. 'Lonnie Zamora incident' carries the account. Whatever flew there, the report made the location a permanent entry in the UFO ledger.
  source: Lonnie Zamora incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident)

HISTORY — 1 documented facts
· [1964-04-24] The April 24, 1964 case was investigated by Blue Book and left unexplained; the site has a commemorative marker. The record dates it to 1964-04-24. The landscape's recorded history gives the file real substance underneath the lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Lonnie Zamora incident' carry the record. The record keeps it — history, not lore.

SOURCES — 1 cited
· Lonnie Zamora incident — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Zamora_incident

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