The James Lumley Case – October 1865

The Wright Brothers may have been the first to put an machine into the sky, but people had been looking up at flying aircraft for decades before the brothers launched the first airplane.

Reports of UFOs were recorded in newspapers of the 19th century. Among the most famous was written in the St. Louis Democrat, Oct. 19, 1865. That article appeared two weeks later in The Cincinnati Commercial, bringing more public awareness to UFOs. The account was of an old Montana fir trapper by the name of James Lumley who saw a UFO fly over him and crash into the forest, exploding like a rocket. The story picked up by the Missouri Democrat and other newspapers, which contributed to national attention or awareness of alien spacecraft.

Most fur trappers may tell tales of Indians, or bears, or mountain lions, but Lumley’s account of a flying saucer that crashed into Cadotte Pass was among the most explicit and remains a mystery to this day. It is said that debris from the crash may still be up there, but few there has been no findings since. Nevertheless the story has remained one of the most mysterious of the 1800s.

Lumley was about 175 miles above the Upper Missouri in Great Falls Montana. He was on his way back to his camp site when he saw a “bright luminous body in the heavens.” It went rapidly into an eastern direction and was plainly visible for about five seconds. As it flew Lumley saw it burst into an explosion in the sky and he later heard an explosion. It was shortly followed by a strong wind through the forest like a tornado, and the event left the air smelling like sulfur.

The next day, after walking two miles, he saw a path “several rods wide” made through the forest. He followed the path and discovered an object or rather a stone on the side of the mountain. What was unusual about this stone is that it had strange hieroglyphics and glass in it. Lumley felt the fragment he had found had come from an immense body and that the hieroglyphics must have been used for some purpose and made by human hands.