What we do know is that Area 51 is located within America's largest military range, the Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range, in a very remote part of southern Nevada. Built just south of a dry lake bed named Groom, Area 51 is also sometimes called Groom Lake or Dreamland Resort. Protected deep within the Nevada Test Site, with almost a thousand square miles of restricted air space around it, its area is just a little smaller than the state of Connecticut.
The United States government has tested cutting-edge aircraft at Area 51 for forty years, from the U-2 spy plane to the Blackbird. For many years, government sources denied that Area 51 existed. Russian spy photographs released in 2000 made it impossible to deny any longer, and the government finally stated, "We acknowledge having an operating site there, and the work is classified."
Area 51 gained great notoriety in 1979, when Bob Lazar announced that he worked at Area 51 on alien spacecraft, and that alien bodies were stored there. On Las Vegas television, Lazar claimed that the government was keeping nine alien "disc" spacecraft at Area 51, that he worked on reverse-engineering the craft and that he held a security clearance thirty-eight levels higher than "Q," which is the highest civilian clearance known.
Others, including Glenn Campbell and Donald Emory, who ran the Area 51 Research Center in nearby Rachel for over three years, and Tom Mahood, who says he is now studying for an advanced degree in physics, have reached the conclusion that Area 51 is exactly what the government claims it to be - a highly secret research facility.
