Beam Me Up, Chile Cheeseburger: A Roast-Friendly Guide to Roswell, New Mexico
Welcome to Roswell, New Mexico, the city that took one very awkward weekend in 1947 and turned it into a personality. If you've ever wanted to eat lunch under an alien-shaped streetlight while a stranger in a foil hat explains cover-ups to you, congratulations, you've found your people.
We didn't come to be mean. We came to be accurate, and the truth is funnier anyway.
The Weather Balloon That Built a Town
Let's start with the origin story. Roswell was founded in 1871 and incorporated as a city in 1903, which means it had a whole 76 years of regular-town existence before the 1947 incident arrived and made everything weird. Today it's the county seat of Chaves County.
Population rankings sound impressive until you read the numbers. The Census Bureau's 2020 count was 48,422. The aliens are visiting, but nobody's moving in.
The Air Force explained the whole balloon thing decades ago, and Roswell responded the way any dignified community would: by building an economy on it. Ask a local what the town would be without the crash and you'll hear about a mozzarella factory and some pecans. It's less a backup plan than a witness protection program with a gift shop.
Where Intelligent Life Goes to Shop
Roswell's skyline is a masterclass in commitment to the bit. There's a flying-saucer-shaped McDonald's, a Walmart with a cartoon spaceman on the wall, and streetlights carved into Grey alien heads. Nothing says "we have our dignity" like a lamp post with enormous black eyes watching you cross the street.
Here's the thing, though: it works. Roswell leans so far into the kitsch that it loops back around to charming. You can't be embarrassed by a town that's this thoroughly unembarrassed.
Beyond the saucers, there's real history here. Roswell is home to the New Mexico Military Institute, founded in 1891, so the town has some genuine institutional gravitas, in between the inflatable aliens. Sitting on the high desert plain of southeastern New Mexico, it's also a good home base for road trips, if you can tear yourself away from the gift shops.
The UFO Festival: Mardi Gras With Better Costumes
Once a year, Roswell throws open its doors to the galaxy. Since 1996, the UFO Festival has attracted thousands of humanoids with an insatiable curiosity and love of all things alien.
The programming is exactly what you'd hope: guest speakers, a UFO parade, pet and people costume contests, live music, family activities, and plenty of aliens.
The downtown merchants, meanwhile, treat festival weekend like the Super Bowl, Black Friday, and a hostage negotiation rolled into one. The other 362 days of the year? The museums are, per one reviewer, where you pay to look at dirt and trees. Fair, but the International UFO Museum remains the town's anchor, and you should go at least once so you can say you've read a very long wall of text about 1947.
- Alien-themed streetlights
- 9 out of 10
- Flying-saucer McDonald's
- 8 out of 10
- Museum-going on a non-festival Tuesday
- 5 out of 10
- Escaping without buying a tiny alien
- 2 out of 10
Eating Your Way Through the Cosmos
Now the food, where Roswell's culinary peak is a green chile cheeseburger from a joint that looks like a converted Tastee Freeze. You will be asked to pick a side between Julie's and Big D's. There's also an Asian buffet, and at least one taco joint that a reviewer described as serving diet tacos with watered-down salsa.
Look, this is New Mexico, and green chile is the state religion. Hatch is a few hours of better chile away and has never once worried about Roswell, but a hot cheeseburger in the desert after a day of alien hunting is hard to beat.
A few practical notes for your trip:
- Population: roughly 48,000 residents, so it's big enough for a Walmart and small enough that everyone knows which alien streetlight is the good one.
- Demographics: a majority of residents are Hispanic, which is part of why the food scene is stronger than the jokes suggest.
- Timing: the UFO Festival lands on the Fourth of July weekend, so book a hotel early or sleep in your rental car like a true abductee.
The Verdict
Roswell is a town that took the weirdest thing that ever happened to it and made peace with it, then monetized it, then put it on a streetlight. That's more self-awareness than most cities manage in a lifetime. Go for the saucers, stay for the green chile, and leave your skepticism at the city limits.
Think we were too nice? See the full roast on RoastMyTown.com.