Project Blue Book Case #1076. On March 22, 1952, witnesses in Yakima, Washington — a city in the broad, fertile valley between the Cascade Range and the Columbia Plateau — observed a bright object. Yakima sits in one of the most productive agricultural valleys in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by mountains and irrigated farmland.
The Yakima area would later become famous in UFO research as a persistent "window area" — a location that produced anomalous reports decade after decade. The Yakima Indian Reservation, south of the city, would become the subject of dedicated surveillance efforts by fire lookout observers in the 1970s, who documented hundreds of unusual luminous phenomena. This 1952 case was an early entry in what would become one of America's longest-running UFO hotspots.
The Yakima Firing Center (now Yakima Training Center), a major Army training facility, was located north of the city. Hanford nuclear reservation was approximately 80 miles to the east. The case was classified "Unknown."