OREGON FLYING SAUCER

This is a classic chain of events that thrill the historians among us. Toss in the provenance of a newspaper article with a picture and you can firmly establish this Mini’s place in pre-plastic flying disc history.

In 1947, an Oregon newspaper reported “nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation” over the Pacific Northwest. The story took off, the term “Flying Saucer” joined the popular lexicon, and the UFO craze began.

The following year, 1948, Fred Morrison and Warren Franscioni molded the first plastic flying disc and named it the “Flyin’ Saucer”.

On June 8, 1950, the story of a flying saucer sighting in northwestern Oregon—accompanied by the two photos—was published as a front-page story in the McMinnville (Oregon) Telephone-Register.

The following month, the 1950 Boy Scout Jamboree opened in Valley Forge, PA on June 27. It was the first Jamboree since 1937 and Flying Saucers were all the rage.

Boy Scout custom dictated each council bring an identifying item such as a patch, coin, or other token for trading. The Cascade Area Council covering the northwest Oregon and southwest Washington region arrived in Valley Forge with 10,000 “Genuine Oregon Flying Saucers” made of locally milled plywood.