Apache–Sitgreaves National Forest, Arizona
34°27′N, 110°27′W
Navajo County, eastern Arizona — Mogollon Rim country between Snowflake and Heber-Overgaard
[from the public record]
34.4500, -110.4500 · view on OpenStreetMap →
What's documented
The site of the November 1975 Travis Walton incident is a logging area in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest near Heber, Arizona. Walton, a 22-year-old logger on a U.S. Forest Service contract, was reported by six co-workers to have approached a luminous disc-shaped craft and to have been struck by a beam of light from it. Walton vanished for five days; his co-workers reported the event to the Navajo County Sheriff and underwent polygraph examinations. Walton's account became the basis for the 1993 film 'Fire in the Sky.'
Notable & intriguing
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On 10 November 1975 — five days after the incident — six members of the Walton logging crew (Mike Rogers, Ken Peterson, John Goulette, Steve Pierce, Allen Dalis, Dwayne Smith) took polygraph examinations administered by Arizona Department of Public Safety examiner C.E. Gilson. Five of six were judged truthful regarding the incident; the sixth (Dalis) terminated the test mid-examination.
Gilson polygraph report, 10 November 1975, in custody of Navajo County Sheriff’s Office
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Travis Walton reappeared at a pay phone in Heber, Arizona at approximately 12:05 AM on 11 November 1975, calling his brother-in-law Grant Neff. He was disoriented, dehydrated, and reported having experienced the events over the prior hours rather than five days.
Navajo County Sheriff’s report, 11 November 1975; Walton, ‘The Walton Experience’ (1978)
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The logging crew was on a U.S. Forest Service thinning contract. The contract’s incomplete-completion penalty was waived by the Forest Service on 18 November 1975, citing the disappearance as ‘force majeure.’ This administrative action created a contemporaneous paper trail confirming the disappearance was treated by the federal government as an established fact.
U.S. Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves contract file 75-3422 (Nov 1975)
Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.
Suggested watching
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Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton (2015) documentary
Walton and the six members of his logging crew on camera, four decades after the November 5 1975 event in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Polygraph re-administration shown in full.
the only film with all surviving crew members on camera together
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Fire in the Sky (1993) film
Paramount adaptation of Walton's account, with D.B. Sweeney as Walton and Robert Patrick as Mike Rogers. The on-craft sequence diverges sharply from Walton's own account; Walton has said publicly he disliked it.
fictionalized — the script is more horror movie than Walton's stated experience
Public-record imagery
