Tour / 7 stops
Stop 1: A ranching family moves onto a Uinta Basin property and soon reports lights, craft and cattle deaths to the local paper.
Terry and Gwen Sherman bought a 480-acre cattle ranch south of Fort Duchesne, Utah. In a June 1996 Deseret News story they reported odd lights and craft, voices, and missing or dead cattle; the property later became known as Skinwalker Ranch.
Stop 2: Las Vegas developer Robert Bigelow starts a private institute to study anomalies with scientists on staff.
Las Vegas real estate developer Robert Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science, a privately funded nonprofit that studied UFO reports, animal mutilations and survival of consciousness. It disbanded in 2004.
Stop 3: Bigelow buys the Sherman ranch and turns it into a monitored research site.
Weeks after the Shermans went public, Robert Bigelow offered about $200,000 for the ranch and the sale closed in September 1996. His NIDS team set up an observation post; a spokesman said in 1997 that researchers had seen no flying craft.
Stop 4: Two insiders publish the NIDS-era story, and the ranch gets the name the public knows.
Former NIDS deputy administrator Colm Kelleher and Las Vegas reporter George Knapp published Hunt for the Skinwalker, describing incidents the authors say NIDS researchers recorded at the Utah ranch, including UFO sightings, unknown animals and cattle mutilations.
Stop 5: A Defense Intelligence Agency contract goes to Bigelow's company, tying the ranch to a government-funded study.
The Defense Intelligence Agency contracted Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies of Las Vegas for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, officially a study of future aerospace threats. It produced dozens of technical papers; funding of about $22 million ended in 2012.
Stop 6: A Utah real estate executive quietly buys the property from Bigelow.
Robert Bigelow's company sold the ranch in 2016 to Utah real estate executive Brandon Fugal, whose ownership stayed private until a 2020 History series. The Salt Lake Tribune cited a reported price of about $500,000.
Stop 7: Cameras arrive: the new owner's research team becomes a long-running History series.
History premiered The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, a series following a team funded by owner Brandon Fugal, including astrophysicist Travis Taylor, as it investigates reported phenomena at the Utah ranch. It has continued for several seasons.
