The Uinta Basin display: Junior Hicks's 400 sightings
Decades before anyone called it Skinwalker country, a junior high science teacher in Roosevelt, Utah, was keeping files. Junior Hicks saw a flying object with his students in 1951 and spent the next forty years logging more than 400 sightings across the Uinta Basin. Some witnesses told him they had seen beings at the windows of the craft, and he reckoned more than one in ten Basin residents had seen something. In 1966 the biologist Frank Salisbury met Hicks, studied the local wave and wrote The Utah UFO Display (1974), with a foreword by J. Allen Hynek.
Evidence, in date order (3)
- 1951Hicks's studentswitnesssaw the flying object with him in 1951 Deseret News, 'Frequent fliers?', 30 Jun 1996
- Jul 1951Uinta Basin residentswitnessmore than 400 separate reports in Hicks's files Salisbury, The Utah UFO Display (HathiTrust)
- 1974Frank B. Salisburydocumentbiologist's study of the Basin wave, foreword by J. Allen Hynek Salisbury, The Utah UFO Display (HathiTrust)
How plausible · High
A named teacher logged hundreds of reports over decades, and a biologist studied his files and published with Hynek's foreword.
- ●●No gain sought A schoolteacher.
- ●●Consistent over time Decades of records.
- ●●Character record Teacher; university biologist.
- ●●Independent convergence Hundreds of witnesses.
- ●○Access He collected local reports.
- ●○Cost of speaking Named.
Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-23.
On the record
- Deseret News, 30 June 1996: Hicks 'has investigated more than 400 UFO sightings in the Uintah Basin since the early 1950s.'
- Frank B. Salisbury, The Utah UFO Display: A Biologist's Report (1974), 'with data from the files of Joseph Junior Hicks', foreword by J. Allen Hynek.Tremonton film
- Hicks died in Roosevelt on 7 June 2020, aged 92.