Home LOCAL PARIS FAMILY FUN: Forget Area 51, take a trip to ‘Area 276’ in North Texas

FAMILY FUN: Forget Area 51, take a trip to ‘Area 276’ in North Texas

by MyParisTexas
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Although ‘Area 51’ is trending, the ‘Area 276′ UFO right here in North Texas is way more exciting and defintely worth the trip.

In Royse City, along the side of Texas 276 on the edge of Rockwall County, is a large orange structure most in the area call “the spaceship.”

The prefab structures are called Futuro Houses, they were designed in the 1960s by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen as “a cheap, durable, and stylish little dwelling that could be placed in any environment,” Atlas Obscura reported.

Only 100 of these fiberglass and plastic homes were made and installed around the world; including two that rest on the outskirts of Dallas.

Although the structure has been a staple in the community for decades it had succumbed to graffiti and a dumping ground.

“Every time I passed it, it broke my heart to see it in such bad shape,” said Gunderson Elkins of Quinlan told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth.

They further reported that Elkins and his friend Chris Shelton decided they wanted to fix up the old spaceship.

“I was trying to bring it back to life,” Elkins said. “It took us about five hours of work, but it took all day just because we had run out of paint.”

Since Elkins and Shelton fixed up the spaceship, other community members have chipped in with services including landscaping.

“I hope that people from outside the community can learn to appreciate it the way we do,” Elkins said.

Texas news outlet Chron featured the Royse City spaceship in a 2017 article.

“While almost a hundred of the pieces were created and placed around the world from America to New Zealand, a number of them were shot down by zoning laws, or demolished,” Atlas Obscura wrote. “The oil crisis in the 1970s made the use of plastic prohibitive and production of the houses was stopped. Despite the objections of some, architecture aficionados took to the buildings and were able to preserve many of them, while those without protection simply fell into ruin.”

If you’re looking for something fun to do with the family this weekend, take a trip down to the ‘Area 276’ UFO.

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