Awaiting delivery from far, far away

"Trust no one."

"I am the last alien."

"It's become this mecca," says a Las Vegas man who's admiring the weathered box. He wears a Johnnie Walker RVs ball cap and declines to give his name.

"That's probably the most photographed mailbox in the world," Arnold says, his gruff voice tinged with awe.

The owners of the mailbox, Steve and Glenda Medlin, moved in 1973 to a cattle ranch in Tikaboo Valley, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas. There was no talk of aliens, and no home mail delivery.

A few years later, a local tungsten quarry reopened. Some miners moved to a trailer park near the Medlins; it grew into the town of Rachel. Postal carriers began delivery, and the couple put up a common black rural mailbox about six miles from their home, near Highway 375.

In 1989, according to a history of Rachel, a man named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television station that he had worked with alien spacecraft at nearby Nellis Air Force Range. He and his buddies, Lazar claimed, also watched saucer test flights in Tikaboo Valley.

So many tourists soon descended on Rachel -- on the edge of the valley -- that the Rachel Bar & Grill was renamed the Little A'Le'Inn. People would down Alien Burgers and beer there before making their way to the mailbox, the only landmark in Tikaboo Valley. The mailbox acquired a cult-like following.

"For some reason, Tuesday nights was when they thought the aliens came out. Then it was Wednesdays," Glenda Medlin says with notable disdain. UFO tourists left messages in the mailbox for the aliens -- on business cards, napkins and notebook scraps. "They were waiting for the aliens to abduct them, and they were anxious to meet them. . . . We'd just shake our heads," says Medlin, who long ago stopped reading the notes. "It was so asinine."

Some people opened the couple's mail, hoping to intercept classified correspondence. Some camped at the mailbox -- for weeks. A few shot the mailbox, leaving holes in the Medlins' bills and junk mail. That was too much for the ranchers.

Medlin doesn't remember when her husband swapped the black mailbox for the larger white bulletproof one, but an online posting pegs the date as March 27, 1996. The next month, the state baptized Highway 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway, making headlines internationally.

Steve Medlin attached a second box solely for the alien-seekers: It has a mail slot and is labeled ALIEN and DROP BOX; some people slide in dollar bills.