While Area 51 is all the talk these days, one North Texas community is ready to stake its claim to all the intergalactic intrigue with Area 276.
In Royse City, along the side of Texas 276 on the edge of Rockwall County, is a large orange structure most in the area call "the spaceship."
"It just crashed in the middle of nowhere," 8-year-old Lillee Duckworth said as she theorized how the structure got there in childhood wonderment.
"I thought, 'is there literally an alien inside?'" Lillee’s 10-year-old brother Samuel Duckworth added.
The spaceship his been in the community for years, but it had become a magnet for graffiti and dumping. [[513429651,C]]
"Every time I passed it, it broke my heart to see it in such bad shape," said Gunderson Elkins of Quinlan.
Elkins and his friend Chris Shelton decided they wanted to fix up the old spaceship.
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"I was trying to bring it back to life," Elkins said. "It took us about five hours of work, but it took all day just because we had run out of paint."
The past life of the spaceship is a thing of legend.
"During the 60's or 70s they were called Futuro Homes. I think there are 50 or so of them left in America," Elkins said.
Since Elkins and Shelton fixed up the spaceship, other community members have chipped in with services including landscaping.
"I hope that people from outside the community can learn to appreciate it the way we do," Elkins said.
