Evelyn Trent
Evelyn Trent was a farmer in McMinnville, Oregon and the first witness to the object photographed in the McMinnville UFO Photographs of May 11, 1950 — among the most extensively analyzed UFO photographs in history.
| Role | Farmer; UFO witness |
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The Sighting
While walking back toward their farmhouse in the evening, Evelyn noticed a slow-moving metallic disc-shaped object approaching from the northeast. She called out to her husband Paul Trent, who came outside and confirmed the sighting before retrieving his camera and photographing the craft. Evelyn thus served as the initial witness, and her reaction — recognizing the object as anomalous and summoning her husband before it departed — made the photography possible.
Legacy
Evelyn Trent's observation established the sighting narrative that accompanied the photographs. Both she and Paul remained consistent in their account over subsequent years, and neither sought commercial gain from the photographs. The Trent photographs were treated by Condon Committee astronomer William H. Hartman as physically consistent with a genuinely distant, large anomalous craft.