RIO RANCHO, N.M. – The City of Vision is home to the largest collection of records about UFO sightings in North America.

KOB 4 found out you’ll soon be able to read through all of them yourself, and it sounds like they’ll need a lot of time.

“How you interpret what a UFO is, you know, is it miss identification of something prosaic? Is it alien? Is it something else? It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day it’s history,” said David Marler, executive director of the National UFO Historical Records Center.

Marler believes that history belongs to everyone.

“Whether you relegate UFOs, to fact fiction or folklore, it’s part of our history, it’s part of our culture. And I feel that regardless of belief, or non belief in the subject, we need to preserve this element of our culture,” said Marler. 

Marler built an addition to his Rio Rancho home to house the thousands of documents he’s collected over the years. Everything from declassified Project Blue Book files to newspaper clippings, air traffic control radio recordings are all packed inside a small room.

“It is essentially a traditional historical archive, albeit dedicated to a non-traditional subject,” said Marler. 

His collection, officially known as the National UFO Historical Records Center, is growing. Marler says more archivists are sending him their collections, so everything is under one roof.

“It’s bringing these puzzle pieces together to get a better picture of what we’re dealing with regard to the UFO subject,” said Marler. 

KOB 4 visited his archive in 2022 and saw documents detailing a UFO sighting near Socorro in 1964. Marler said there was a similar incident near Española, but at the time he didn’t have many documents to back it up. Now he does. 

“Contrary to the Air Force conclusion, they provided no indication that this witness was drunk, they deemed him credible. And they provided all of this additional information, which we never had access to, until just recently,” said Marler. 

Marler says there are countless connections hiding in his archive, and he’s partnering with Rio Rancho Public Schools to let other researchers and everyday people take a look. 

“They have some open space that they would like to allocate for us to house this incredible treasure trove of history,” Marler said. 

Marler says he will start moving his collection into two portable classrooms in the Rio Rancho School District later this year. While it will be open to the public, he says you’ll have to make an appointment.

“Who knows what the average person might discover. What discoveries are waiting for us in these case files that we have yet to connect the dots,” said Marler.

Marler says the new space is roughly six-times as big as his current set-up, and that extra space will be put to good use.

Marler told us he knows of at least 12 more collections heading his way. He believes he’s already collected a good chunk of what’s out there, but we’re talking about documents of sightings as far back as 1880, and from all over the world.

Marler says the public archive will be free to access, and it will operate off of donations and volunteers.

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