Research Balloons – Not ‘Flying Discs’ – Come Down
On Farm In Boulder County

• The [Boulder, Colorado] Daily Camera
  July 11, 1947

The five balloons – one large one and four small ones attached to it – carried instruments to check cosmic radiation at high altitudes. The small balloons exploded with a loud report just before they came down on Elmer Adnerson’s farm, known as the Spurgeon place, about three miles west of Niwot, near Haystack mountain.

Anderson notified the state highway patrol, as requested by the instructions on the intrument’s box. Patrolman V.F. Eminger went to the scene and cut loose the still-inflated big balloon, about 12 feet in diameter. It went soaring away – perhaps to be seen later by someone who would mistake it for a “flying disc.” Eminger and other highway patrolmen relayed the instruments [text not legible] broken but generally in good condition back to Denver University’s scientific bureau.

The Camera received a call from the Nederland dam Thursday morning saying that five balloons were overhead and drifting east.