Sighting record / 1959
February 28, 1959. A cold evening on Utah State Route 14, outside Cedar City. Army private Gerry Irwin watched a glowing object cross the sky ahead of him and sink behind a ridge. He thought it was a plane going down. He left a note on the steering wheel. He wrote STOP on his car in shoe polish. Then he walked into the snow. Searchers found him unconscious. No crash. No wreckage. What followed was stranger still. Blackouts, a missing jacket, a compulsive return to the scene, and a disappearance that made him one of early ufology's lasting mysteries.
Gerry Irwin was a Nike missile technician stationed at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas. In late February 1959 he was driving back to base from leave in Nampa, Idaho. At Cedar City, Utah, he turned southeast onto State Route 14. There was snow on the ground.