McMinnville, Oregon
A city in Yamhill County, northwestern Oregon, and the site of one of the most analyzed and debated UFO photographs in history. On May 11, 1950, farmer Paul Trent and his wife Evelyn photographed a disc-shaped object over their farm southeast of McMinnville — producing two images that decades of photographic analysis have largely failed to conclusively debunk.
The 1950 Trent Farm Photographs
On the evening of May 11, 1950, Evelyn Trent first observed a slow-moving metallic disc approaching from the northeast as she was feeding rabbits on the family farm. She called for her husband Paul, who retrieved a camera and photographed the object twice before it accelerated and disappeared to the northwest. The two photographs show a disc-like object with a flat bottom and a rounded or conical top against a clear sky, with the farm's carport visible in the foreground for scale.
The images were subsequently published in the McMinnville Telephone Register and then nationally in Life magazine, attracting widespread attention. The Condon Committee examined the photographs in 1969 and concluded they could not be explained as a hoax — a conclusion that ran contrary to the report's general debunking mandate. Subsequent computer-enhanced analysis found no evidence of a string or support structure that would indicate a model, though skeptics have proposed various prosaic explanations.
Annual UFO Festival
McMinnville has embraced its place in UAP history by hosting the annual McMinnville UFO Festival, one of the largest UFO-themed events in the United States, drawing tens of thousands of attendees each year.