I remember the first time I drove through Roswell, New Mexico. The alien shaped McDonald's. The UFO themed Walgreens. The endless rows of gift shops hawking tinfoil hats next to genuine Native American pottery. It felt like Disneyland designed by a paranoid schizophrenic.

Now New England has its own version of this peculiar American tradition. Along a remote stretch of highway in New Hampshire's White Mountains, businesses have built an entire economy around a single couple's unverified 1961 claim of alien abduction. Betty and Barney Hill's story remains entirely uncorroborated by any physical evidence, yet it has somehow become the foundation for an ecosystem of alien themed gas stations, resorts, and gift shops selling everything from extraterrestrial mood rings to fuzzy pens with three eyes.

This is not just kitsch, though God knows we love our kitsch in this country. It represents something more profound about our economic moment, where the line between genuine cultural heritage and capitalizable conspiracy grows increasingly blurred. The Hills' story persists not because anyone has proven it true, but because proving it false would demolish the livelihoods built around its ambiguity.

What strikes me most intensely isn't the absurdity of plastic aliens filling gas station shelves instead of the usual beef jerky and lottery tickets, though that does deliver a certain cognitive dissonance. It's the quiet brilliance of turning an unfalsifiable claim into a renewable economic resource. The UFO encounter that cannot be proven becomes the business model that cannot fail. Doubt isn't a problem for this enterprise, it's the fuel.

I once interviewed the owners of a similar attraction in Arizona devoted to cryptozoological creatures. When I asked how they maintained inventory consistency for something that didn't exist, the proprietor actually winked at me. "The Yeti," he said, "pays better than Santa Claus. No unions. No licensing fees. Just pure margin."

The New Hampshire operation appears equally profit minded. Betty's torn dress displayed like a religious relic, Barney's malfunctioning watch presented with the solemnity of Apostolic relics. The details of their story morph depending on which brochure you read or which tour guide you follow. A cynic might call this hypocrisy, capitalizing on trauma the business owners don't actually believe occurred. An economist would call it brilliant branding differentiation.

What unsettles me most isn't the commercialization itself. We've turned civil war battlefields into picnic spots and nuclear test sites into Instagram backgrounds. It's the selective credulity required to sustain these enterprises that leaves me conflicted.

I witnessed a child maybe eight years old crying near the “authentic alien artifact” display at the Indian Head Resort last summer. When his mother asked what was wrong, he whispered, “What if they come back while we're here?” The gift shop clerk overheard and immediately pivoted from salesperson to crisis counselor. “Oh honey,” she said without missing a beat, “they only take Canadians now. Something about the healthcare system.”

The incident encapsulates the entire operation. Create just enough suspense to make the story visceral, then immediately undercut it with humor to keep merchandise moving. Maintain plausible deniability while cultivating plausible believability. It's textbook American capitalism meets campfire ghost story. The business model works precisely because it never resolves the central contradiction.

One must wonder about the workers sustaining this economy. From the teenager dressing as a grey alien mascot during peak tourist season to the artisans hand painting alien garden gnomes, their livelihoods depend on elaborately pretending to believe something they likely find ridiculous. I once watched a substitute teacher struggle to maintain discipline with seventh graders. Now imagine doing it while wearing a silver jumpsuit and oversized black contact lenses.

This phenomenon isn't entirely new, of course. Medieval villages thrived by displaying scraps of Noah's ark. Gold rush towns sold maps to nonexistent mines. The entire seance industry of the 1920s created countless medium jobs for perceptive women who recognized bereavement as a growth market. Contemporary America has simply perfected the art of monetizing doubt.

What makes this iteration uniquely modern is its collision with our current epistemological crisis. At a time when political operatives openly discuss “alternative facts,” when social platforms financially reward conspiratorial thinking, the Route 3 alien industry feels less like harmless tourism and more like a canary in the coal mine. If we can build sustainable businesses around completely unverified personal anecdotes, what economic incentives might we create for manufacturing more?

Consider that Hollywood keeps greenlighting movies about the Hills' experience despite zero new evidence surfacing in six decades. “The UFO Incident” in 1975 with James Earl Jones. A new project with Demi Moore in development now. Each adaptation makes the story more cinematic, more self referential. The cottage industry fuels the film industry fuels the merchandise industry in an ouroboros of profitable speculation.

The real tragedy of Betty and Barney Hill isn't whether extraterrestrials traumatized them. It's that our economic system leaves rural communities so starved for viable industries that selling rubber aliens becomes not just logical, but necessary. When the paper mills closed, when manufacturing moved overseas, what were people supposed to do, become organic artisanal pickle farmers? At least UFO tourism provides actual paychecks to actual humans, however absurd the premise.

Driving past the giant fiberglass alien welcoming visitors to the gas station, I think about Charles Ponzi selling postal coupons and L. Ron Hubbard inventing religion for tax purposes. This isn't fraud, not exactly. Nobody claims the merchandise comes from actual UFOs, just that it commemorates a famous local story. The semantic gymnastics would make a corporate lawyer proud, but at least it provides jobs.

All along Route 3, the green plastic faces stare from every storefront window. They look less like invaders from another galaxy than anthropomorphic dollar signs, their oversized heads begging to be printed on t shirts and coffee mugs. The humor masks something darker. Our ability to turn anything, even trauma, into product. Our willingness to suspend disbelief if the story comes with parking lots and clean restrooms.

I bought a magnet before leaving. Not because I believe Betty and Barney Hill met interstellar travelers. But because repurposing wild stories into subsistence might be humanity' oldest survival skill. When reality stops providing, we invent better ones. And if the invention comes with fuzzy pens and air conditioning, well, that's just capitalism doing what it does best. Making the unbelievable sustainable, one refrigerator decoration at a time.