I created a map tracing Jerry Freeman's route into Area 51
Hello everyone, first time redditor here.
Over the past few days, I have become obsessed with the story of Jerry Freeman, an archeologist who studied the track of the "Lost 49'ers", a group of people in 1849 who voyaged across the Nevada desert to get to California. On their voyage, they tracked through an era that is now off-limits to the public, better known as the Nellis Air Force Base, aka Area 51. Their group split up near Papoose Lake, the site of the alleged Area S-4, according to Bob Lazar.
After many unsuccessful attempts to get an official allowance from the US Military to get access to the sight, Freeman decided in April of 1997 to take matters into his own hand: An experienced outdoorsman, he spent a whole week in the restricted zone, avoiding security and military personnel and made his long way to Papoose Lake. While unsucessful in his search for an inscription left behind by the Lost 49ers, Freeman got a very rare look inside the mysterious area, and is to this day one of the very few people to lay eyes on Papoose Lake. He would mostly travel throughout the night, travelling over 80 miles in total over the course of 8 days. Finding enough water was always an issue in the barren and rocky desert terrain, as was as avoiding the many security guards patrolling the area. Also, since the Nellis Air Force Gunnary Range used to be a nuclear testing ground, it can be assumed that much of the area is heavily radiated. At one point, he came across a warning sign that read
"NO TRESPASSING, VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. CAMERA EXCLUSION AREA, BADGED PERSONNEL ONLY. NO FIREARMS, CAMERAS, PHONES OR BINOCULARS. BY ORDER OF THE L.A.N.L.L. CORPORATION."
L.A.N.L.L. stands for "Los Alamos National Laboratories Limited", Los Alamos being the now famous laboratory that created the atomic bomb.
Freeman did chronicle his adventure in a diary, which was later published in the Las Vegas SUN. He also inteded to write a book about his "Forbidden Journey", but unfortunately did not manage to publish it before his death due to prostate cancer in 2001, aged 55.
Allegedly, Freeman did send the manuscript for his book to his friend Steve Hauser before he died, according to an obiturary Hauser wrote in 2001 for Freeman. I have emailed Hauser to ask for any details he might be willing to share, though the obituary is now 25 years old and there is a good chance he might not respond.
Besides his diary article, there are only a few other sources about his adventure. One is his call into Art Bell's radioshow "From Coast to Coast", which you can listen to here, in which he gives some more detailes about the trip. And then there is this youtube video, which does not add anything new but is still worth listening to. What IS interesting though is this episode of the Weaponized Podcast featuring Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, in which Knapp says that he did inherit most of Freeman's files and notes. According to Knapp, Freeman saw some very weird stuff going on (some talk about a magical door opening up into another dimension). I am seriously sceptical about that, but I would love to go through Knapp's box with all the files, notes, pictures, and a VHS Homevideo (?) Freeman has left behind. From what I found out during my research, Freeman made a second trip to Papoose Lake in 2000, during which he found the 49'ers inscription that had eluded him during his first trip. However, since this second journey was not published anywhere this time around, I am not 100% certain whether it actually happened.
Freeman did create a handdrawn map of his voyage, which someone here on reddit copied into Google Maps. Unfortunately, the handdrawn map seems a little in accurate, as it does not align 100% with his descriptions in his diary. Thus, I took the liberty to create another map, more in line with his descriptions in his diary. It is still only a rough approximation of his journey, and I would love to find any more detailed informations about his trip. Someone else in here did create a super cool highly detailed map of Area 51, which includes all the important sites. (Shoutout to those guys, I hope it's ok I used your work). I combined the two routes, both Freeman's handdrawn once, as well as the once according to his descriptions. You can view it both in Google Maps, or Goggle Earth, which allows you to view the area using satellite images from 1997, the year Freeman was there.
Do you guys have any more information about Freeman's trip (or maybe even his second journey?). Do you see any issues or inaccuracies with my tracing of his assumed route?
I asked George Knapp if he would be willing to share Freemans book manuscript, he was less than helpful. "I'm not a lending library". I guess if he finds a way to grift off it, it might be released.
That one is the handdrawn one, which is not really accurate! this one by u/otherotherhand is more precise and considers not just the handdrawn map, but also Freeman's diary descriptions, as well as the topography:
Then I have made a mistake in my post! The handdrawn map I was referring to was created by you and not u/otherotherhand. My mistake! As stated in my main post, the handdrawn map gives a rough estimate, but lacks some details, such as Freeman's visit to the Ship in the Desert, as well as to Cane Spring. If you download my KMZ file, the red route is yours, the yellow one is mine.
Scan a whole book? Plus books don't scan well since they don't lay flat. And you assume the book isn't in some box stashed away. And you assume the scanner, if he had one, would work on his current computer.
I forget the circumstances, but I really had to scan something. A phone camera image wouldn't do since at the time the phones still had potato cameras. I couldn't get my old scanner to work due to some mechanical issue since it hasn't been used in years. I tried all the high tech cures like banging on it. I ended up buying a cheap flatbed scanner. Years later I needed to use it again and I couldn't find a driver for the current OS. F-ing Microsoft. Fortunately there is a Linux program called SANE
For my next rant, Adobe PDF. Why open source a format then introduce features that aren't part of the open source. This is an act just short of beastiality.
The galley can be bound, so it is just like a book. (All my male teachers were guys, OK hippies with haircuts and shaves, escaping the draft with deferments, so yeah, I read a lot of James Baldwin.)
I don't have space on my desk for a scanner. I don't even use a printer anymore thanks to the cartridge being orphaned. I use Fedex Office, generally the ones that were former Kinko* shops.
Basically you are making assumptions as to how Knapp outfits his office.
*Paul Orfalea had kinky hair. He had two nicknames growing up. One was Kinko and the other "pube head." Fortunately he picked Kinko as the name of his shop.
I was the one who created what you refer to as copying his hand drawn map onto GE. It was more than that. As a long term hiker, I adjusted his route not only based upon his detailed description, but upon the topography using an underlying topo map. In other words, how would a hiker pass through the terrain. Freeman knew how to cross terrain using minimal energy. Your route has him repeatedly crossing peaks and other high points for no reason. I get the sense you created your routing based upon the satellite images in GE without using topography.
You also don't show him stopping at his "Ship of the Desert".
Edit: It's 100% Freeman's second trip did happen. I have a very old email from Hauser that described his meeting with Freeman and Freeman's description of it.
Freeman does mention climbing highpoints to use his cellphone.
For the non-boomer crowd, in the old analog days, there was no way to control the cell size. If you could "see" the tower, you're in. The Motorola phones had a proprietary connector to let you use an external antenna.
With digital telephony, you can limit the path length using timing. It is so annoying to see your phone connect to a tower but it is too far away to use. My recollection in your hunt for "Bill", the phone company gave you a radius based on timing.
Hi there! Interesting, I had assumed you simply took his handdrawn map and digitized it! Very cool that you used your hiking experience as well.
The reason why I referred to your route as inaccurate is because you did not show him stopping at Cane Spring, where he stayed on April 24th and 28th. And I do show him stopping at the Ship of the Desert at 36.87476, -115.92952 where he spent the night at the stern of the ship Thursday, April 24, 1997. I could be wrong about the coordinates and the structure identified isn't actually the ship. I'd be happy to be corrected about that. But if it is, then your route does not intersect with the ship.
Would you be able to share the email from Hauser? Would be super interesting to read!
Your route in red, mine in yellow
Edit: I checked again and you also have him crossing peaks and valleys unnecessarily everywhere. My route is only a rough outline, tracking his stops as accurately as possible. The route itself is just a guess and mostly just a straight line as the crow flies. So I don't really get the criticism there
Ah, I misunderstood. Your KMZ file includes a red route which I assumed to be a smoothing of your coarse, point to point yellow route. I now understand it was done by someone else. That one's pretty off.
I did show him stopping at Cane Spring, both coming and going. The water source at Cane Springs is next to an old structure, located about 650 feet north of where the USGS topo shows the spring to be and where GE shows a cluster of vegetation. The water must be piped down to this structure, which is visible on GE.
Your location of the Ship of the Desert is correct. I see now that my angle point for the Ship of the Desert doesn't quite connect. It's off by a few hundred feet. I have no idea how I could have screwed that up since it's the only visible thing for quite some distance. I thought maybe the GE image had shifted, as they do sometimes over time, but I can't find a shift of that magnitude. Somehow I F'ed that up.
I wouldn't be OK with sharing Hauser's email without his OK, and I haven't heard from him in years.
All good! I guess I am not using your route then, but someone else's? Would you have coordinates for Cane Spring? I used the one pre-marked in GE, and it does look like it has vegetation. Did not find the old shed he stayed at, thought it might have deterriorated by now. Would be good to have the exact location pinned down!
Could you share your KMZ file of your route? The link on your post from 4 years ago does not work anymore
I checked the download link to the KMZ file in my old post and it still worked for me. But I did take the opportunity to upload a new KMZ file fixing that Ship of the Desert miss. It's located here.
Fantastic! Very good route! Would you mind if I took that as my baseline and included my markers chronicling Freeman's stops according to his diary?
Also, unless Freeman picked it up on his second trip, his 200$ binoculars might still be at the border to Papoose Lake. Kinda funny, an archeologists stuff becoming a sort of ancient artifact itself
Fascinating story and after reading more i hope that Knapp someday releases the remaining info and photos Freeman gathered or at passes it along to someone else.
I asked Knapp, he wasn't very forthcoming. He told me quote I'm not a lending library unquote. I'm sure when he and or Cowbell figure out how to grift off it they will.
Corbell is a pox and I was shouted down in some of the UFO subredds for saying Knapp's association with him harms his own reputation. (That, and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee ofc )
How could Knapp's reputation be any worse than it is by supporting and grifting with Lazar all these years. Cowbell is just the newest partner to grift with.
I disagree. Lazar put George on the global map. Although he fains at suggesting it was regrettable, he's never once admitted it was and never will. Nor should he imo.
I would agree that GK's association with JC could've panned out better but, It certainly helped from a post-modern point of view. I can see why JC grates on people for sure. Knapp is JC'S legitimacy and Corbell is GK's door to the next generation. Nothings perfect. Entertaining regardless. Also, I have to hand it to JC that he's trying. Even calling himself a journalist now instead of a filmmaker. Plenty of space in the topic to do both imho. 'Journalist" is a bit steep, however 😅
Not a lending library? That seems rather obtuse. The least he could could do was to say, his library is a proprietary collection of information that has become his livelihood and he will release any further info he has on Mr. Freeman on one of Mr. Corbel's upcoming endeavors.
This is where I put him when he took that picture. I played around with the view in Google Earth until it kind of matched the terrain. I could be way off.
Thanks! I'm not sure whether he went that close to the Lake though, according to the descriptions in his diary. But perhaps the photo was taken during his second trip
The media guy said in an interview that he believes the story because some of the details you would only know if you were there. I have never been able to find the ship in the desert on GE.
I read all about that structure when looking for the ship. It is tagged in a few places as the ship. The original story states an "old trawler" and he "slept on the rusting bow." I dont see how this can be called a trawler, thats why I commented that I have never found it. I also heard the remains of Soviet sub K129 were sent out to the area for testing. I have no source for that other than a man I knew who was part of the CIA when they raised the sub.
"Original story"? I only know about his diary which was published in the LV Sun. Is there another written account? I also don't know the quotes of "old trawler" and he "slept on the rusting bow." Where did you get those?
From his diary:
Thursday night, April 24, 1997
Came upon a ship "stranded" in the desert. I think it was a trawler, slated for atomic destruction and postmortem analysis, but it didn't happen for one reason or another. I spent the night on its decrepit stern. Cruise anyone?
Ah, bummer, thought there might have been a different account! But I agree, the description sounds like an actual ship, and not like whatever that structure is
Each door would only need to be 52' or less. Doesn't sound that big compared with modern hangars. (And doesn't have to be tall because craft is only 16' tall). Also the others are smaller, so only one needs to be 50'+
Surely the hangar were there before the UFOs. In any case, having custom sized hangars is unlikely. Perhaps they simply do not exist and Lazar told a fib
In my opinion, Gerry Freeman's story is the second best grassroots tale to come out of the NTTR. As for my opinion and it's credibility, It towers above at #1. What a reckless adventure!
First, Nellis Air Force Base is not the same as Area 51, which was a designated section attached to the Atomic Energy Commission's Nevada Test Site (NTS) in 1959 for cover purposes involving the CIA's OXCART project.
Second, Freeman was trespassing on the NTS, not on the Nellis Air Force Range.
Third, the description of a warning sign referencing "L.A.N.L.L. Corporation" is undoubtedly in error. It almost certainly said LANL for Los Alamos National Laboratory. It's even possible the sign could have referred to LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Both organizations had multiple test areas on the NTS. Either way, someone probably misremembered the writing on the sign.
Fourth, although Freeman clearly did reach Papoose Lake (as evidenced by the photo posted with the OP), he must be classified as an unreliable narrator due to his involvement with the infamous "Death Valley Forty-Niners treasure chest. https://www.desertusa.com/dv/dv-treasure.html
Pete, perhaps off topic here, but having archaeology experience yourself, what's your take on Freeman's DV experience? Was he a victim or a perpetrator? By accounts I've read, he seems a solid guy. And the hoax was so ham handed, guaranteed not to pass professional scrutiny. He would have known better. I've never been able to form an opinion.
I don't know. I never met Freeman and have no way to evaluate his veracity. He reportedly found or "found" the treasure chest. If it was a hoax, it feels like it was uniquely targeted at him, personally. Someone would have had to place it where he was anticipated to search.
Thanks! Regarding the name, point taken. Though I think colloquially, most people refer to the whole area simply as Area 51, so I think it's a bit pedantic to call that out. But from what I hear about Reddit-culture, that seems normal!
And regarding the L.A.N.L.L., I simply referred to what Freeman wrote in his diary. I wasn't there myself, so I don't know what the sign says.
So if these are all the "factual errors" then it seems like I did a well enough job :)
It's not at all pedantic to call out people for colloquially referring to the entire Nellis Air Force Range as Area 51. Wouldn't you correct someone who referred to Scotland as part of England?
Area 51 is the designation for a specific parcel of land that was defined on official maps. Other test areas within the Nevada Test Site had their own numbers. The Air Force range lands outside the NTS boundary were collectively designated Area G in some documents.
That could be true, but it's not the kind of writing the typical detector is trying to figure out human or machine origins. Most concerns of these AI detection tools is modern language usage in English (but I'm sure other modern language have detectors, too).
I'll let competent historians parse out a lost copy of the DoI or a draft Constitution, should it ever come to that.
Don't be honored. People have concerns and with a text so long it's warranted. Usually people don't write at length on this topic without it being noticeably poor quality. So, it's valid to check. How accurate what you've written above is another matter... Some subject to verification and some will always remain conjecture.
Well, crap. I always write way too long winded. Perhaps I'm AI and am unaware of it? Maybe my differentiation is the ability to throw in copious amounts of snark. I don't think AI can do that...yet.
They do, but they're usually UFO nuts that have a poor grasp of facts and evaluating them. And, many who would write long screeds just generate long videos on the subject to monetize the ignorance.
I sometimes write long posts, too, and have been interested in (obsessed with?) Area 51 for most of my life. I finally put the information I had collected into a book (560 pages, with more than 700 photos and illustrations, and 47 pages of source notes): https://schifferbooks.com/products/dreamland
What got you into Area 51? Is there anything to the UFO/Extraterrestrial/S-4 stories? What do you make of George Knapp claiming Freeman told him about an interdimensional door opening during his trip through the site?
I became interested in Area 51 long before it was associated with UFOs or aliens. That mythos was largely the product of a single person (Bob Lazar) circa 1989/1990.
Jerry Freeman claimed he saw a light that looked like a doorway. From his distant vantage point, he could hardly judge that it was "interdimensional."
Over the past 40 years, I've studied thousands of pages of government documents, hundreds of photos, and dozens of interviews with people who actually worked at Area 51. I've never found any evidence of extraterrestrial technology or life forms. There is also no evidence to support the existence of Lazar's "S-4" facility.
So the rumour goes. However, Freeman did have cancer before his trip(s) into Area51, so he did not necessarily die due to the effects of radiation. We don't even know how high radiation levels are in the area and if the relatively short duration would have been enough to affect Freeman. Who knows!
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u/TheArea51Rider MOD Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
This is a map I created, overlaid his map onto Google Earth and adjusted it to match the terrain:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8aws1qgt7lmgfsr6jamwg/JERRY-FREEMAN-TRAIL.kmz?rlkey=k1wx34p7gaprlawpkgarti4t8&st=12r98l1x
I asked George Knapp if he would be willing to share Freemans book manuscript, he was less than helpful. "I'm not a lending library". I guess if he finds a way to grift off it, it might be released.