World’s First UFO Landing Pad, and the First Landing!

St. Paul, Alberta, a small town in east-central Alberta, Canada has the world’s first official UFO Landing Pad which was built in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s centennial. The 130 ton concrete structure consists of a raised platform with a map of Canada embossed on the back stop, consisting of stones provided by each province of Canada. The pad also contains a time capsule to be opened on the 100-year anniversary of the pad’s opening in 2067. A sign beside the pad reads:

The area under the World's First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.

In the 1990’s, a rounded, saucer-shaped tourist information centre was opened on the site containing a museum of UFO memorabilia including photographs of alleged landing sites, mysterious cattle mutilations, and crop circles.

While it has never been used for its intended purpose, the pad has drawn plenty of tourists and even hosted a UFO conference in 2000. There’s even a UFO hotline, so if you have a sighting, here’s the toll-free number to call 1-888-SEE-UFOS and 1-888-733-8367.

Interestingly, Alberta isn’t the only place on earth to have a UFO landing pad. The town of Arès, near Bordeaux, south-western France, has it’s own welcome pad for alien visitors. This triangular pad, dubbed “UFOport" was built in 1976 after a local airport electrician and UFO nut complained to local authorities that France had no alien craft strips. The local mayor liked the idea and decreed that extra-terrestrial visitors would be exempt from airport tax and could take part in any local boules or mud-skating competitions.

Unfortunately, no outer space visitors have ever been seen around Ares, much less land on the pad, although it does draw some 20,000 human visitors each year.

To ensure that the hopes of the local people are kept high, a fake Martian craft, build by a local artist was landed on the strip last month. Real or fake, it was the first UFO landing after 34 years.

It's been suggested that the whole idea of “UFOport" was simply a ruse to bring in more out-of-town tourists to Ares. We tend to agree.

Meaning of UFO

An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-relatedconspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts).

Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2).

During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAFProject Blue Book, Condon Committee).