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Near Mount Rainier, mysterious sightings continue to baffle the public

A sailor from the USS California in Mount Rainier National Park in Pierce County and Lewis County, Wash., circa 1940. The image was taken from Pinnacle Rock with Mount Rainier in the distance.

On a clear June afternoon in 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying past Mount Rainier when a flash of light caught his eye.

Arnold, a Boise businessman and private pilot, had been on his way from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington, when he made a brief detour near Mount Rainier National Park. A $5,000 reward had been offered for anyone who could locate a Marine Corps transport plane that had crashed in the area, and Arnold had decided to take a look while passing through.

The detour didn’t lead Arnold to the missing plane. Instead, it led him to a sighting that would help ignite America’s fascination with UFOs.

Looking toward Mount Rainier, Arnold said he spotted nine brilliant objects moving rapidly through the sky. They appeared to travel together, weaving through the landscape as they headed south from Rainier toward Mount Adams.

A picture of a flying saucer photographed by farmer Paul Trent shown flying over his farm in McMinnville, Ore., May 11, 1950.

Arnold tried to make sense of what he was seeing the way a pilot might. He watched the objects against known landmarks and timed their progress between the two Cascade volcanoes. His calculation produced an astonishing result: approximately 1,200 mph, far beyond the speed of known aircraft at the time.

“It seemed impossible,” Arnold told the East Oregonian the following day, “but there it is — I must believe my eyes.” The newspaper reported that Arnold described “nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation,” extremely bright and moving at an “immense rate of speed.”

Within days, Arnold’s story had spread across the country.

More eyes turn to the sky

Christian Stepien, chief technology officer and a board member of the National UFO Reporting Center, considers Arnold’s encounter among the foundational events in the history of American UFO sightings.

“There were sightings before that, but this was really the first one that was really famous,” Stepien told SFGATE.

And once Arnold’s story was out, other people began coming forward with stories of their own.

A picture of a flying saucer photographed by farmer Paul Trent shown flying over his farm in McMinnville, Ore., May 11, 1950.

Just three days after Arnold’s flight, the Oregon Daily Journal reported that a Salem woman identified as Mrs. Dennis Howell said she had spotted silvery disks in the sky sometime between 3 and 5 p.m. on June 24 — the same day as Arnold’s sighting. She had “given no further thought to them,” the newspaper reported, until she read about Arnold’s encounter.

Her account was one of many that began appearing in newspapers around the country. Reports came from pilots, people watching from the ground and others who said they had seen strange objects days or even weeks before Arnold’s story made headlines.

“People started seeing, started reporting these things all over the country after that,” Stepien said.

In the following week, newspapers offered a snapshot of how quickly the fascination took hold.

By June 27, the Oregon Daily Journal was running Arnold’s story alongside reports of Howell’s sighting and a supposed photograph of seven disk-like objects. That same day, the Seattle Star devoted a large portion of its front page to reports of “saucer-like objects” from witnesses around the Pacific Northwest.

Within weeks, “flying saucers” had entered the American vocabulary.

There was a problem, though: Arnold hadn’t actually identified the objects he saw as saucers. His description was about how they moved.

“He didn’t actually use the term flying saucer,” Stepien said. Arnold, he explained, told reporters that the objects moved through the air like saucers skipping across water.

From left, pilots E.J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold and Ralph E. Stevens look at a photo of an unidentified flying object that they sighted while en route to Seattle, Wash., 1947.

A 1947 photo of a flying disc over Seattle by Frank Ryman.

“Everybody picked up on that and turned that into the term flying saucer,” Stepien said.

Arnold’s descriptions of the objects themselves were somewhat different. He recalled nine bright objects traveling together, including shapes he compared to a pie plate with a section missing from the rear. Rather than flying steadily in a straight line, he said, they appeared to weave through the landscape while moving together as a group.

The distinction did little to slow the phrase’s spread. “Flying saucer” quickly became shorthand for the strange objects people suddenly seemed to be seeing everywhere.

Beyond the flying saucer

The reports did more than popularize a new phrase. They helped establish a shape that would become synonymous with UFOs for decades.

Stepien said reports from the 1940s through much of the latter half of the 20th century frequently described the now-familiar disk or saucer. Even today, the National UFO Reporting Center receives accounts from people recounting sightings they say happened when they were children.

“A lot of those stories are of flying saucers,” Stepien said.

But the objects people report seeing have changed over time. Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, Stepien said, reports increasingly described large triangular objects rather than the classic disk. Witnesses have described equilateral triangles with lights at each corner, sometimes with another light in the center.

B-52 Stratofortress over Mount Rainier circa 1950.

Today, Stepien said, the center still receives reports of disks, but triangles and unexplained balls of light — often described as “orbs” — have become increasingly prominent in the accounts it collects.

Whatever people are actually seeing, the reports have never stopped.

The National UFO Reporting Center was founded in 1974 by Seattle firefighter Bob Gribble, who established a telephone hotline and began asking police departments and air traffic control centers to direct UFO reports his way. Stepien became involved two decades later, helping move the operation online.

The center has since collected nearly 200,000 reports, Stepien said, creating a sprawling record of what people across the country say they have seen in the sky. And some parts of the Pacific Northwest — where the modern flying saucer phenomenon began — continue to stand out.

Simply counting UFO reports can be misleading, Stepien said. Places with more people naturally generate more sightings. But when reports are considered on a per-capita basis, he said, parts of Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon emerge as areas with unusually high concentrations.

There could be a straightforward explanation. The same broad landscapes and open skies that gave Arnold a clear view across the Cascades can make it easier for people to notice unusual things overhead.

A “12” flag waves on top of the Space Needle in front of Mount Rainier after the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl LX victory celebration and parade on Feb. 11, 2026, in Seattle, Wash.

“If you’ve got a clear view of the sky and you can see more of the sky and it’s not cloudy, you’re probably going to see more UFOs,” Stepien said.

What those people are actually seeing is another question. An unidentified object is, by definition, something the observer simply can’t identify, and nearly 80 years after Arnold’s flight, there is still no agreed-upon explanation for what passed by Mount Rainier that afternoon.

The descriptions have changed since 1947, but the basic experience Stepien hears about hasn’t changed much: Someone looks up, sees something they can’t explain and wonders what it is.

For Arnold, it happened on a clear afternoon over Mount Rainier — and Americans have been looking up ever since.