That stretch of highway in southern Colorado where the sky feels bigger than anywhere else on earth, and the ground beneath your feet hums with something you cannot quite name.
I pulled off on a clear afternoon, drawn by a hand-painted sign and a gut feeling that this stop was going to be worth it.
A watchtower sits in the heart of the valley, a high-altitude desert framed by mountain ranges on every side, with skies so dark at night that the Milky Way looks close enough to touch.
Founded in 2000 by a former cattle rancher, this modest but magnetic landmark has grown into one of Colorado’s most genuinely fascinating roadside destinations.
I climbed the observation platform and scanned the horizon, not sure what I was looking for but certain I wanted to find it. Visitors come from across the world to scan for unexplained lights and leave a piece of themselves in the garden below.
If you are a lifelong believer or simply someone who loves a great story and a spectacular view, this place has a way of getting under your skin.
A Beacon in the High Desert: The Story Behind the Watchtower
Judy Messoline never planned on becoming the keeper of Colorado’s most cosmic roadside stop. She was a cattle farmer who bought land in the San Luis Valley and quickly realized the cows were not going to cut it financially.
Faced with a tough choice, she leaned into the valley’s long reputation for mysterious aerial activity and opened the UFO Watchtower in May 2000.
The decision turned out to be inspired. The San Luis Valley had already been drawing skywatchers and curiosity seekers for decades, with reports of strange lights and unexplained phenomena stretching back generations.
Messoline simply gave those people a place to gather, share their stories, and look up together without anyone making them feel foolish for doing so.
What she built is genuinely unpretentious. There are no flashy LED signs or manufactured thrills here.
The Watchtower is a handmade, community-driven landmark that reflects the personality of the valley itself: wide open, quietly strange, and surprisingly welcoming. Visitors have logged over 163 reported sightings since the place opened, and Messoline herself, once a skeptic, has personally witnessed 27 of them.
The location sits at roughly 7,600 feet in elevation, which means the air is thinner, the sky is closer, and the horizon seems to go on forever. Arriving here for the first time feels less like pulling into a tourist attraction and more like stumbling onto something real.
That feeling does not go away quickly, and for many visitors, it does not go away at all.
Climbing the Platform: What the View Actually Feels Like
The platform itself is not towering. At ten feet off the ground, it is more of an elevated deck than a skyscraper, and that is exactly the point.
Getting just a little above the flat desert floor completely transforms your sense of scale. The valley opens up in every direction, and the mountains that ring it, the San Juans to the west and the Sangre de Cristos to the east, suddenly feel like the walls of the most dramatic natural amphitheater imaginable.
On a clear day, you can spot the rippling tan crests of Great Sand Dunes National Park from up there. The dunes look almost unreal from this distance, like a mirage dropped into the middle of a landscape that already feels slightly otherworldly.
The flatness of the valley floor makes the sky feel enormous, a dome of blue or black depending on when you visit.
At night, the experience shifts into something else entirely. This location has been rated Bortle Class 2 on light pollution maps, which puts it among the darkest skies accessible to the average traveler in the continental United States.
Satellites drift overhead in steady arcs. Shooting stars appear without warning.
And occasionally, something moves across the sky in a way that does not match any of those familiar patterns, which is precisely why people keep coming back.
Bring a jacket even in summer. The desert cools fast after sunset, and you will want to stay up there longer than you planned.
The Gift Shop and Museum: Small Space, Big Stories
The converted barn that houses the gift shop and museum is one of those places where every inch of wall space is doing something interesting. Binders stuffed with handwritten visitor accounts line the shelves, filled with sketches, dates, coordinates, and descriptions of lights and shapes that do not match anything conventional.
Flipping through them feels oddly personal, like reading someone’s diary of the unexplained.
The displays inside were built piece by piece by the community over the years, which gives the whole space a warmth that no professionally designed museum could replicate. There are photographs, newspaper clippings, and artifacts that trace the valley’s long history with aerial strangeness.
Nothing here feels manufactured for shock value. It all feels like evidence of genuine curiosity collected over time.
The most striking exhibit is the skeleton of Snippy, an Appaloosa mare whose end in 1967 became the first globally publicized case of UFO-related animal mutilation. Judy Messoline acquired the remains in 2021, and they now occupy a prominent spot in the museum.
The bones show what appear to be precise, surgical cuts, and no blood was found at the scene. Whatever your position on the cause, the story is impossible to dismiss.
The gift shop side of the barn carries alien-themed souvenirs, local books, and the kind of quirky keepsakes that actually feel worth buying. Staff members tend to be knowledgeable and happy to chat, adding another layer of genuine character to a stop that already has plenty of it.
The Healing Garden: Tokens, Vortexes, and Collective Energy
Just beyond the platform and the barn, the Healing Garden spreads out across the scrubby desert ground in a way that stops you mid-step. It is a rock garden, but calling it that undersells it completely.
Thousands of visitors have left behind objects here, rings, crystals, children’s toys, handwritten notes, fossils, coins, and things that clearly meant something specific to the person who left them. The accumulation is genuinely moving.
Locals and self-described sensitives have long spoken about two energy vortexes on the east side of the tower, one rotating clockwise and one counterclockwise. Messoline has embraced this aspect of the property openly, encouraging visitors to contribute to the garden as a way of engaging with whatever unseen forces might be present.
Whether you believe in vortexes or not, the garden carries a quiet power simply because of the human intention embedded in every object within it.
I left a small stone there. It felt like the right thing to do, not because I was certain of anything, but because the space invited participation rather than passive observation.
That is a rare quality in any destination.
The garden evolves constantly as new items arrive and weather works on the older ones. Visiting it in the morning light is different from seeing it at dusk, when the low sun catches the glass and metal and makes the whole thing glitter.
Plan to spend more time here than you think you will. Most people do.
Camping Under the Stars: Spending the Night at the Watchtower
Staying overnight at the UFO Watchtower is a completely different experience from a daytime visit, and honestly, it might be the better one. The campsites are simple and close together, each equipped with a spool table, a fire ring, and a small cooking grate.
The porta-potties on site are clean and well-stocked, which matters more than it sounds after a long day on the road.
Once the sun drops below the San Juans, the transformation is remarkable. The last glow fades quickly out here with no nearby towns to bleed light into the sky, and within an hour of sunset, you are looking at one of the most pristine night skies available to any traveler in Colorado.
The Milky Way appears as a dense, textured band overhead, not a faint smear but an actual structure you can trace from horizon to horizon.
Campers regularly report hearing unexplained sounds after dark, seeing lights move in patterns that do not match aircraft or satellites, and occasionally waking up to find strange marks or impressions that were not there the night before. One visitor described mysterious footprints on their windshield after a gentle rain.
These stories are part of what makes camping here feel like genuine participation in the ongoing mystery of the valley rather than just a budget accommodation choice.
Bring warm layers, a good sleeping bag, and a red-light headlamp to preserve your night vision. The hosts are friendly and the atmosphere is relaxed.
This is stargazing as it should be.
Planning Your Visit: What to Know Before You Go
The UFO Watchtower sits right along CO-17 between Hooper and Center, making it an easy pull-off whether you are heading toward Great Sand Dunes National Park or passing through on a longer San Luis Valley loop. The drive along CO-17 through the valley is flat and fast, and the Watchtower sign is visible from the road, so missing it takes actual effort.
The grounds are open daily from 10 AM to 5 PM, which gives you a solid window for a daytime stop. That said, the real magic happens after dark, so if you have any flexibility in your schedule, arriving in the late afternoon and staying to camp is the move that most visitors end up recommending.
The gift shop and museum are worth at least an hour on their own.
A few practical notes: the area is genuinely remote, so fuel up before you arrive and bring more water than you think you need. Cell service is limited out on the valley floor.
The elevation sits around 7,600 feet, so if you are coming from sea level, take it easy your first day and drink plenty of water to help your body adjust.
The alien-themed sculptures and yard art scattered around the grounds make for great photos even before you climb the platform. Kids tend to love the whole setup, and the staff is consistently described by visitors as warm, knowledgeable, and genuinely enthusiastic about the place.
It is the kind of stop that earns a spot in your travel stories for years.
Address: CO-17, Center, CO 81125
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