As if the situation couldn't get any more bizarre. Now the family locked in a major land use battle with the USAF over their property that overlooked the air base at Area 51 wants the Air Force to tell them how a 200-pound antique anvil disappeared from the property just weeks after it was officially seized.
The Sheahans have, in one way or another, been fighting the Air Force for decades. You should read all about this more than extraordinary struggle here. But now, more than a year after the property was condemned under eminent domain in the fall of 2015, the issue has come down to what the historic mine is worth. As of late last year, the two parties were as far apart as one can imagine. The USAF drastically dropped what it was willing to pay for the mine to a paltry $333,000, while the Sheahans claim the property could be worth as much as $116 million.
On top of that, the family says that by law all their personal property needs to be relocated from the site on the US Air Force's dime, a fact that seemed to have been a given when the condemnation process was executed. But now, according to the Sheahans, the Air Force isn't even going to do that. The family stated the following in a press release:
The relationship has gotten so contentious between the Sheahans and the Air Force that the family is now demanding answers as to how an antique anvil that weighs 200-lbs could have disappeared within the most highly secured land mass in the world just weeks after the family was evicted from their property that lies within its perimeter.
The Sheahan's puzzlement as to how such an ungainly object could have vanished from such a secure locale is totally warranted. It's an anvil, so we know it didn't get up and walk away on its own, and the only people who would have access to the mine were presumably those who work at the base or who secure its heavily monitored perimeter. In other words, random hikers didn't casually rob the place. Also, considering that most of the workers at Area 51 are either flown there or are bussed in daily, the ability to remove the anvil from the secretive installation's grounds becomes even less plausible.
As sophomoric as it sounds, the historic anvil from the Sheahan's property—the last private parcel of land with a direct line of sight of the flight test installation at the center of Area 51—would be a nice "victory trophy" for powers that be at the secretive facility. Considering that the place is supposedly littered with test aircraft and is likely the most compartmentalized facility in the US, it's unclear how exactly the USAF could investigate such an act.
In fact, investigating Area 51 on an official level is next to impossible, as proven by the lawsuit filed by workers that became gravely ill during the 1990s after toxic chemicals were systematically burned in trenches at the base. Before that suit, the base never officially existed. To this day, renewed executive orders are issued by the White House to keep it so classified that it is largely shielded from oversight and the American judicial system.
In other words, the chances that the Sheahans will be seeing their anvil anytime soon are probably as good as you or I receiving a formal invite to come take a personal tour of the installation.
So there you have it, the enigmatic Area 51—a wondrous place that is not only associated directly with aircraft that can disappear, but now also with mysteriously disappearing historical blacksmithing hardware.
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