Uintah Basin, Utah

Notable & intriguing

• The Hicks family — later the Sherman family — reported recurring anomalous events on their Uintah Basin ranch beginning in 1994. Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow purchased the property in 1996 and operated it as the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDSci) research site until 2004.

  Kelleher & Knapp, Hunt for the Skinwalker, 2005; Bigelow Aerospace records.

• The Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP, 2007–2012) contracted with Bigelow Aerospace and included a “BAASS” research operation focused on the Skinwalker site. The program’s existence and contracting were confirmed via the 2017 New York Times reporting that broke the AATIP story.

  New York Times, 16 Dec 2017; DIA-released contract DIRS-001.

• The Uintah Basin is one of the most extensively wintertime-inverted airsheds in the western United States, frequently registering some of the highest ground-level ozone concentrations in the U.S. during winter — a meteorological condition unique enough to be the subject of multi-year EPA studies.

  Edwards et al., Atmospheric Environment, 2013.

• The Ute Tribe’s oral tradition associates parts of the basin with the yee naaldlooshii (Navajo: skinwalker) cycle of stories, and Ute leadership has consistently declined cooperation with paranormal investigators of the ranch, citing the tradition’s protected status.

  Ute Indian Tribe public statements, 2018.

Public-record items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.