Landing Next Month: The 23rd Annual McMenamins UFO Fest

The Observer's tireless 'UFO Tourist' punches his ticket for Oregon

by Bernie O’Connor: bernieo@booksonufos.com

How would you like to attend a UFO fest that’s based on actual proof? Not just a festival that celebrates a mythology created by witness testimonies? Admittedly, in this situation, we are discussing photographic proof. But not just any UFO photos, we’re talking about the world famous Paul Trent photos of 1950. Photos that even the infamous 1969 U.S.A.F sponsored Condon Report recognizes as authentic—and mind you, the Condon crowd was a pretty tough bunch to please.

If you answered “Yes!” Then the McMenamins UFO Fest on May 19th & 20th, 2023 is for you.

As their website states: “Every year, thousands of visitors flock to McMinnville, a quiet Willamette Valley town located an hour southwest of Portland, to attend the famous three-day UFO Fest. Second in popularity only to the UFO festival in Roswell, New Mexico, Oregon’s annual celebration features a UFO parade, an Alien Costume Contest and Alien Costume Ball. Live and free music indoors and out, a 5K Alien Abduction Dash, a pet costume contest, expert speakers, Q & A events with the featured speakers, a ‘landing party’ with vendor booths and Kids Fun Run.

Founded in 2000, this UFO Festival began at the historic McMenamins Hotel Oregon as a way to honor the famous 1950 Trent photographs taken in McMinnville, and has evolved into an epic celebration of all things extraterrestrial.”

As most readers of The Observer are aware of, the Trent photos have been held up to intense scrutiny since day one and have passed every rigorous test successfully. (See Dr. Bruce Macabee’s McMinnville! Scientific Analysis of the Most Famous UFO Photographs Ever Taken.) Dr. J. Allen Hynek commented in the same book: “McMinnville represents the most interesting unidentified UFO photo case of all, and one which the photo analyst for the Condon Committee all but declared a real UFO.” The photos were also used in Frank Edwards 1966 blockbuster best seller, Flying Saucers – Serious Business. Still, to be fair, there are some skeptics who claim these photos are fake, but in over the 73 years since these photos were taken, never has any such evidence to support these suspicions or opinions ever come to light.

Now – On to the Fest!

First, a little background on the McMenamins company. It’s a family-owned chain of brewpubs, breweries, music venues, historic hotels, and theater pubs in Oregon and Washington. Many of their locations are in rehabilitated historic properties; at least nine are on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1985, McMenamins opened Oregon's first brewpub in Southwest Portland. According to the Brewers Association, McMenamins is one of the top 50 largest craft breweries in the United States. I reached out to Renee Rank Ignacio, the Director of Marketing for McMenamins and she graciously agreed to a phone interview.

B. Thank you, Renee, for sharing your time with me. Let me say, your UFO Fest looks like a lot of fun.

R. Oh it is. It’s grown into a great event that involves the whole community. The Festival’s parade is held throughout the streets of downtown McMinnville and many businesses are extremely helpful in getting that set up as well as participating. There have also been 5k runs, which are put on by the McMinnville Community Center, as a part of the UFO Festival celebration and those have been held at Linfield College, a private college with a campus in McMinnville and another partner in making the Festival happen. Some downtown businesses also have a UFO window contest to show off their UFO excitement leading up to the festival. Third Street Books holds UFO story times and they make sure to stock up on plenty of UFO books prior to the festival.

B. So, Renee, did the festival grow over the years or was it an immediate hit?

R. For the first few years of the Festival, the downtown merchants, and seemingly the community at large, didn’t embrace the event. However, with the launch of the costume parade through downtown McMinnville, circa 2003, that’s what really brought crowds and attention to the UFO Fest. Businesses and schools participated in the parade with creative floats and activities. Eventually, the McMinnville Downtown Association took on the organization of the parade with the businesses that are located downtown. And at that point, the community was wholeheartedly on board.

It was also interesting to learn that a lot of local people were not aware of the famous Trent photos and they became really interested in them. The photos are now a source of community pride, so to speak.”

B. Who is responsible for the venue and sourcing speakers?

R. McMenamins is responsible for creating the venue, specifically, McMenamins Historian, Tim Hills and the rest of the history department. Throughout the years, Tim and his team have researched possible speakers and built up amazing relationships with them. Luckily for us, those speakers will then recommend other expert speakers for our team to reach out to for the following years. We have been told by many of our speakers that it’s the best UFO festival they’ve been to. We’re able to mix the serious conversation of the topic while still having fun, but the fun doesn’t come at the expense of the people who believe in UFOs.

B. Thank you again Renee for sharing your time with our readers and I know they all wish you great success with your upcoming festival.

R. Thank you Bernie, it was a pleasure.

Renee was also kind enough to put me in contact with the Historian, Tim Hills, who also consented to a phone interview.

B. Hello Tim, thank you for speaking to me. I understand that you’re the person responsible for the festival.

T. Yes, I was researching the history of the Hotel Oregon as well as the community surrounding it. I was at the local county historical society looking through their files for material about McMinnville and came across a copy of the front page of the McMinnville Telephone Register from June 8, 1950. It was the article about the Trent flying saucer sighting, featuring the two photos that Paul Trent took of the UFO hovering above his farm on May 11. I became intrigued in the story and eventually got in touch with Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who had done the definitive investigation of the Trent case back in the late 1970s. I called him up and asked Dr. Maccabee if he was willing to make the trip west to give a presentation at McMenamins Hotel Oregon. He said he was, and he did. And the rest as they say, is history.

B. And how well was Dr. Maccabee’s talk received by the community?

T. The inaugural UFO Fest event was held on May 11, 2000, 50 years to the day of the Trent sighting. A podium was set-up in one of Hotel Oregon’s moderately-sized event spaces on the ground level. So many people showed up that the room filled up quickly, leaving scores of folks standing in the hallway, restaurant, and even outside looking through the windows. It proved to be a very successful event, overall.

There’s one other interesting point I would like to share with you about Dr. Macabee’s trip out here. We were able to get permission to visit the farm where the photos were taken. We went out there, and Dr. Maccabee took numerous measurements and photos. The original home building wasn’t there anymore, but part of the shed that’s in the photo was still standing at the time. That was really exciting to see.

B. Has any of the Trent family ever attended the festival or given a talk?

T. Yes, members of the family have attended past festivals, but none of the family members have ever done a presentation. They’ve expressed interest in what we were doing for the festival and how the community was reacting.

B. Tim, thank you so much for these insights. Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

T. Yes, one more thing if I may. When we were renovating the Hotel Oregon, the McMenamins insisted that we have an open air, rooftop bar and grill so our guests could look for UFOs.

B. Love it! Thank you again Tim, and cheers to your 23rd. Festival!

T. Thank you, Bernie.

Tim was nice enough to arrange a short interview with April Trent for me. Paul and Evelyn Trent were her Grandparents.

B. Thank you April for agreeing to answer my questions.

A. Sure, I’ll be happy to.

B. What impact did these famous photos have on the family?

A. I grew up seeing the photos at my Grandparents house and we always talked about them. They became a source of family pride and a sort of legacy for us. My parents felt good about them, everyone felt good about them. It was an exciting family event to learn about growing up. I still think about the photos to this day.

B. Growing up as a Trent, did you, and do you now, talk about the photos readily with friends?

A. I never had a problem talking about the photos. I love talking about them, in fact.

Paul Trent and his trusty camera.

B. How do you feel about the McMinnville UFO Fest honoring your Grandparent’s photos?

A. I think it's awesome that the city celebrates the photos every year. I have been to the Fest a couple of times and I try to go as many times as I can. I bet Paul and Evelyn are there in spirit and are really happy about it.

B. April, are you interested in UFOs? Do you have any opinions on them, one way or the other?

A. I am very interested in the subject of UFOs. I think they are way cool!

B. Thank you for your time now, April. Enjoy yourself at this year’s Fest.

A. Will do, Bernie. And thank you for thinking about the Trent family.

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Speaking of the 23rd festival, here are this year’s speakers: Travis Walton, Abductee and returning speaker; Jennifer Stein, Crop Circle Investigator and Director of Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton; ET Experiencer and Author Sev Tok; Earl Grey Anderson, MUFON State Director of Southern California; Cheryl and Linda Costa, UFO researchers and co-authors of the UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2020. Plus a live Podcast: Into the Paranormal with Jeremy Scott, where he interviews some of the featured speakers. To see their full bios, visit: ufofest.com/speakers.

Past speakers at the McMenamins UFO Fest included such UFO Luminaries as: Whitley Stieber, Irena Scott, Kathleen Marden, David Paulides, Jeremy Corbell, George Noory, Nick Pope, Bob Lazar and Stan Gordon. Definitely a who’s who in UFOlogy. Click here to see the full list.

Guaranteed, with the flurry of recent UFO reports, supposed shoot downs, and mystery balloons floating all about, this year’s crop of presentations promises to be very lively indeed!

• To buy tickets to this year’s events: ufofest.com

• To sign up for their email list: page.co/d18l8v

If you can—grab your tinfoil hat and pet to have fun dressing up and marching in the parade, then settle in at the beautiful Hotel Oregon for some, as Frank Edwards so aptly titled his book: Flying Saucers–Serious Business.

If you can’t make this year’s Fest, and you visit McMinnville sometime later, make sure you stop by the Oregon Hotel. You’ll see framed, the last remaining copy of the front page of the June 8th 1950 Telephone Register, the newspaper that originally broke the Trent story. Also prominently on display in the lobby, is the actual camera used by Paul Trent on that fateful evening of May 11th, 1950.

A huge shout out goes to Carly Smith and the team at Maxwell PR of Portland, OR, whose generous help made this article possible. All parade photos courtesy of: McMenamins/Kat Nyberg, Copyright 2023.

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The Trent photos controversy continues...

On 9/9/08 Journalist Dan Tilkin for KVAL Channel 13 in Eugene Oregon reported that the Trent family managed to track down the actual negatives of the photos taken by their father, the originals had been missing for 25 years. It turned out that Bruce Maccabee was in possession of the film since 1974. Maccabee immediately offered to return the photos to the Trents, but the family thought it would be safer to return the negatives to the News-Register, and the paper would give them back to the family. Unfortunately, that never happened. Read the full story here.

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The McMenamins YouTube channel: Here you can view presentations from past UFO Fests. Featured videos include: Dr. Lynne Kitei’s Lecture on the Phoenix Lights Mass UFO Sightings; Randall Nickerson, who was the 2018 UFO Festival key speaker and worked for years researching and gathering evidence in Zimbabwe; George Knapp, Peter Davenport and many more.

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References:

• Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects-Paperback Edition, pg. 396 – Case 46 – McMinnville. Conclusion: pg. 407

• Visit the Bruce Maccabee Research Website to read his technical paper on the Trent Photos.

• Click here to read about the 1954 French Flap and a comparison of the Rouen photo with the Trent photos.

• Click here to download a report on the McMinnville photos, complements of McMenamins.

• Click here to read the first installment of UFO Tourism: ‘Where’s The Party?’

Next destination for our UFO Tourist: The Pine Bush, N.Y. UFO Fair

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Issue #13