Almost every parade I have ever covered as a journalist begins with a police escort. The same was true for the 2025 UFO Festival Parade in McMinnville, the seat of Oregon’s Wine Country, on Saturday, May 17.
What used to be a sleepy little town in rural Yamhill County became one of the epicenters for UFO aficionados after the local paper printed a photo in 1950 of what was allegedly a flying saucer spotted in the evening sky above the Trent farm, just outside of McMinnville in the small rural community of Sheridan.
The photos made a big splash across the country, with Life magazine and many newspapers reprinting them. The incident was investigated by the Air Forces’ UFO-investigating Project Blue Book, and was included in the “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects” report, nicknamed the Condon Report. At the time the report was written it was concluded that the Trent’s sighting was a real UFO. The report was later discredited.
It is still considered one of the most famous UFO sightings in the country…