Raiding Area 51? You'll find a sci-fi brothel, a gift shop and a bunch of desert

AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. – The phones are ringing here, the calls coming in from somewhere out there. They haven’t stopped for days.

Behind the counter of the Area 51 Alien Center, an extraterrestrial-themed souvenir and convenience store 90 miles from Las Vegas, a cashier picks up the line.

The voice on the other side wants answers about the raid of Area 51.

They're talking about the globe-grabbing Facebook event that generated 1.7 million RSVPs and forced the military to warn anyone wanting to set foot near the impenetrable government compound that there would be consequences.

Nonetheless, they make contact.

“They call asking, ‘Are we having an event here?’ ‘Is there a stage?’” said Jeffery Ware, the 49-year-old Alien Center manager who lives in an RV across the road. “We’re also getting an abundance of prank calls. We get at least 100 a day.”

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If it's not an interested “raider" on the call, it’s a bored school kid or a reporter calling from a cubicle across the country – or a vendor asking for a spot to pitch a tent for merchandise. Everyone, it seems, is trying to turn a profit on the raid of Area 51.

“We’re not doing that,” Ware said.

The mothership beckons

News of the raid has heaped much attention on this slice of rural Nevada, a place known for its natural beauty and wide-open lands.

Joke or not, the Facebook event – which promises to "storm Area 51" in order to "see them" – prompted a response from the Air Force, which operates the base on which Area 51 is located.

"The Nevada Test and Training Range is an area where the Air Force tests and trains combat aircraft," Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews said in a statement to USA TODAY.

"Any attempt to illegally access military installations or military training areas is dangerous."

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Area 51, part of the larger Nevada Test and Training Range at Nellis Air Force Base, has been the subject of conspiracy theories that say the U.S. military is housing secrets about aliens and UFOs.

In turn, the lore surrounding the secret base motivates visitors to flock to the desert every year in hopes of maybe seeing something extraterrestrial.

The 90-mile drive along U.S. 95 to this far-flung fill-up stop passes a sheep range dotted with Joshua trees, the Air Force base and the bleak buildings of a state prison slammed in the middle of an otherwise majestic landscape.

Rolling into Amargosa Valley, five big-eyed, gray and smiling aliens on a billboard beckon drivers to stop.

Many do. And what they find often surprises them.

'I’m a God-fearing woman'

Next door to the Area 51 Alien Center is the Alien Cathouse, a “Sci-Fi themed” brothel once owned by the late Nevada pimp Dennis Hof, whose Moonlite Bunny Ranch was featured on HBO's late-night reality show "Cathouse.”

Inside the Alien Cathouse, there’s a full bar, a glass case filled with sex toys and a hallway of rooms where patrons fulfill their wildest extraterrestrial fantasies. Behind one of the doors is the “Alien Abduction and Probe Room.”

The phones are ringing here, too.

“Everybody wants to know what’s going on,” said brothel cashier Angela Hoskins, who drives more than 40 miles to work every day from Pahrump. “I just hope it doesn’t get out of control when they don’t get what they want.”

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Callers have pressed Hoskins to describe over the phone the brothel's services – a request she denies every time, as state law prohibits her from doing so, she said.

“Because I’m a God-fearing woman, I listen to God’s laws,” Hoskins said, “but I also listen to the law of the land.”

'It's just a tourist trap'

Two doors down, at Alamo Fireworks, manager Patrick James eats vanilla wafers and sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup in between answering the phone.

"People think this is Area 51,” James said. “It's not here at all. It's just a tourist trap over there.”

James has worked seven years at the Alamo, home of the “world’s largest firecracker” – the M-800, a towering prop, complete with a green wick, planted in a patch of desert next to the shop.

Alamo Fireworks will be closed when the raid event kicks off Sept. 20 at 3 a.m. – but James will be inside, keeping watch.

"I'll be here in case something happens," he said.

A Martian-faced inventory

At the Area 51 Alien Center, tourists file out of cross-country tour buses to buy sandwiches, drinks, snacks and alien-themed souvenirs.

The store’s Martian-faced inventory has everything from socks and license plates to alcohol products and T-shirts designed with jokes from the beyond.

“My family was abducted,” one shirt said, “and all they brought me back was this crummy tTshirt.”

Alanna Murphy, a 72-year-old patron from Oregon, picked through the shirts while her fisherman husband, Ed, roamed the store. She heard about the raid on Facebook, where she spends a lot of her time at home.

“It was one of the weirder ones,” said Murphy, who described herself as a “Facebooker.”

She can’t figure out why anyone would want to raid Area 51.

“What’s your purpose?" Murphy said. "What’re you going to do? And to whom?”

Her husband hadn't heard one peep about the raid.

"He's not a Facebooker," his wife said.

The phones are still ringing

At the epicenter of the tongue-in-cheek raid of Area 51, there's an alien-themed convenience store, a fireworks dealer and a brothel. No doubt it's a peculiar mix for outsiders unfamiliar with the Nevada brand of strange encounters.

On the other side of U.S. 95 are the charred leftovers of a Chevron gas station. The one normal piece of this place, recognizable in any city, burned down two weeks ago.

"Kitchen fire," Ware said, but the blaze near the Alien Center remains unsolved and under investigation.

Meanwhile, the phones are still ringing, calls coming in from somewhere out there, looking for answers about a mystery soon to unfold in the dark of the Nevada desert.

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Area 51 raid: In Nevada Amargosa Valley, there's a brothel and desert