Raw capture

Uncanny Expeditions — "Is A Secret Military Operation Hiding In Sedona, AZ?" field investigation (2026-06-24)

Uncanny Expeditions — "Is A Secret Military Operation Hiding In Sedona, AZ?" field investigation (2026-06-24)

Source: Uncanny Expeditions (YouTube channel focused on perimeter recon of test ranges/secret facilities). On-site skeptical field investigation of the Secret Mountain / Bradshaw Ranch / Clarkdale "Sedona base" lore.
URL: https://youtu.be/oH55fEuka1w
Published: 2026-06-24. Duration: 1:01:29. ~9,300 views at capture. Chapters: Sycamore Canyon (00:00), Clarkdale Cement Plant (16:05), Bradshaw Ranch (39:27), Conclusions (50:22).
Captured: 2026-06-24 via youtube_transcript.py (auto-captions; an embedded sponsor read for Incogni is left in place as captured).
What this is: a firsthand, evidence-based field check of the claims Ross Coulthart's 2024 NewsNation Sedona series carried. The creator camped above Sycamore Canyon (PVS-14 night vision, thermal, ADS-B awareness), reconnoitered the Clarkdale cement plant (the alleged tunnel "front") from the surrounding national forest, and explored the fenced Bradshaw Ranch at night. Skeptical but careful: it debunks specific claims on checkable grounds (the orbs, the cement-plant ownership, a "secret base" photo) while honestly conceding a residual (independent secondhand reports of Blackhawks landing in the canyons and at the cement plant). Analysis: ../../sources/bradshaw-ranch-sedona-lore.


Hey everyone, welcome back to today's
episode. So today's expedition might be
a slight departure from some of my other
videos. Usually you'll find me
traversing the remote perimeter sections
of military test ranges and aerospace
facilities, but today I'll be taking you
guys to a place that may not even
actually exist. I'm talking about the
rumored secret military installation in
the wilderness outside of Sedona,
Arizona. Now, this has been a highly
requested location from some viewers for
over a year now. And I know some of you
are excited while others of you are
probably rolling your eyes. But I will
promise you none of you know how this
video will go. And in fact, I may end up
making some of you angry with the
opinions that I express later on in this
video. But one thing is for sure, I'll
be taking you guys into the absolutely
beautiful back country out here in
Arizona. It's an absolutely stunning
location and I'll be showing you guys
whatever my camera sees and giving you
my raw, honest, unfiltered opinion and
not necessarily just paring whatever
narrative might be floating around on
other YouTube channels. So, sit back,
buckle up, and let's hit the road while
we dive into some of these rumors.
The journey begins in the small northern
Arizona town of Williams, which sits
along Interstate 40 near Flagstaff. I'm
actually very familiar with this town,
and in fact, I've owned property here
for several years. Today, I'll be
heading down some forest roads into the
vast expanse of national forest land
that sits between here and the town of
Sedona.
This is a very remote area for the most
part and the roads and trails will have
varying degrees of maintenance. I'd be a
bit more hesitant to explore this area
during the monsoon season as the mud
here in northern Arizona can be pretty
brutal and I found myself having to get
winched out of some sticky situations
before. Things are pretty dry this time
of year, so I'm hoping the majority of
roads will be passable.
I first became aware of these secret
militarybased claims from Ross Coltart's
series he did for News Nation last year,
although the allegations have circled
around in Euphology for much longer than
that. And in fact, one of the earlier
references to it I could find is in
William F. Hamilton's book Cosmic Top
Secret, published all the way back in
1991.
One thing I should make clear is that
the town of Sedona has quite a bit of,
shall we say, folklore that has to do
with all things paranormal.
Portals, cryptids, ghosts, various new
age claims have all persisted here for
many decades. And I can't say that's
something I'm particularly into. In
fact, I tend to actively avoid it, which
is probably why I've avoided Sedona for
the most part, despite spending time
here in Northern Arizona in the past.
Well, that and it's always seemed a bit
like a tourist trap. I'm going to be
doing my best to explore these secret
military base allegations on their own
without straying too much into the other
stuff if possible. In Ross' piece, he
heavily features local residents and
proponents of the secret military base
claim. Jeremiah Horstman and Alexander
Caldwell, who claimed that strange
orblike aircraft escorted by military
helicopters can frequently be seen over
the area, and that hikers often run into
mysterious men in black or heavily armed
military personnel, often bearing no
insignias on their uniforms or sometimes
disguised as Forest Service rangers.
All this is while hiking through what is
supposed to be public land belonging to
the Cookanino National Forest.
Further claims indicate that the
majority of this secret base lies
underground beneath the areas of Secret
Mountain and nearby canyons like
Sycamore Canyon and that a tunnel
connects the facility to a cement plant
in the nearby town of Clarkdale, which
houses an entrance and support facility
for this supposed subterranean base.
All this definitely sounds a bit
far-fetched, but I'm not inherently
opposed to the idea that there could be
some sort of clandestine operations
being conducted on or over public lands.
In fact, we do often see experimental
test flights over BLM land out in the
desert regions of Nevada and Southern
California. And of course, camo clad
insignialess private security
contractors are certainly a regular
feature at Area 51. So, could something
similar be happening out here? I've long
been fascinated by the possibility that
there could exist some unagnowledged
secretive test ranges in remote parts of
the Southwest. So, this was something
that I at least wanted to explore for
myself. I'll link to Ross Colart's video
in the description, and we'll be
examining the claims a bit closer later
in this episode, but for now, I'm
heading to a place overlooking Sycamore
Canyon, which is one of the places that
is alleged to have a lot of this strange
activity. Hopefully, we'll be able to
get a good view of the airspace to keep
watch for any mysterious aircraft
escorted by helicopters or possibly run
into the threatening armed guards that
they claim patrol these isolated
stretches of forest.
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Well, it took me a tad bit longer than
anticipated getting here just because of
all the uh the rocky terrain. I had to
take it pretty slow, but I finally
arrived to the end of this little trail
and uh the view is absolutely
incredible.
As the sun begins to set, I settle in
for my night on the rim above the
canyon, setting up my PVS14 analog night
vision device to scan the area for
anything in the sky, anomalous or
otherwise.
One thing that became pretty apparent is
that there is quite a bit of commercial
air traffic in this area. You have the
Sedona airport as well as a small
airfield near Prescuit and one near
Cottonwood. Not to mention a good deal
of higher altitude traffic traveling
through a very normal flight corridor.
I hardly ever see anyone who makes the
claims about orbs or military aircraft
address this. And in fact, not once did
I see Ross Colart check ADSB data to
verify whether what he was seeing was
unusual or not. This is a common problem
with a lot of UFO media these days, so
it's certainly not unique here, but I
think it's important to address.
Here, for example, is a perfectly normal
landing light on an aircraft out towards
the town of Jerome, likely headed for
Cottonwood. When viewed through the
image intensifier, it looks pretty
orblike, doesn't it? PVS14s and other
similar night vision devices have a
tendency to make everything look orblike
and more spherical than it actually is
due to the nature of the technology.
Some devices, depending on their halo
spec, are more susceptible to this than
others. And I find that most of the
self-proclaimed UFO hunters who tout
their militaryra night vision equipment
really don't understand or want to
understand how they work.
It wasn't much longer into the night
when I was confronted with another of my
biggest pet peeves, with some in the UFO
community. Turning to the west, away
from the canyon in front of me, I
noticed through the lens of my night
vision device some more quote unquote
orbs appearing over the treeine. Had I
finally seen the anomalous craft rumored
to take off from within these canyons?
Well, no. Here, in fact, we have a
classic case of low Earth orbit
satellites. Videos of these, often sped
up for dramatic effect, are constantly
passed around on X and Instagram as
UFOs, sometimes innocently by people who
don't know what they are, and other
times by those looking to deliberately
deceive for clicks and ad revenue. I'll
admit the first time I encountered this
phenomenon, I didn't know what I was
looking at until I did some research and
found this to be a wellocumented
phenomenon among anyone familiar with
astronomy, astrophotography, etc. The
biggest tell is that every light here is
moving completely linearly. We don't see
anything stop or change direction. These
satellites will appear to flare in a
small window of the sky, which changes
based on the position of the sun as well
as your relative position to the
satellites.
People doing night sky time-lapses will
often see a little cross-hatching
pattern in part of the frame due to
these satellites flaring up in one
specific area.
What I'm seeing here tonight isn't a
particularly dramatic example of this
phenomenon, but it is one that I've
become very well acquainted with on my
nights out in the desert. And with space
getting more and more crowded every
year, this effect is only going to
increase in frequency and duration as
time goes on. Any object that I see
moving in a straight line that appears
to get brighter in a small section of
the sky before slowly fading out, I
pretty much always assume is a
satellite, given that it matches this
known and well doumented behavior.
Here's a good sped up video of some
satellites in the flare window shot by
my friend Josh on his account UFOland
taken with a psionics aurora digital
night vision moninocular as opposed to
the analog unit that I'm currently
using.
Outside of the flare window, I also see
a satellite traversing the sky in a
pretty normal pattern. Again, it's
completely linear. It does look very
bright, uh, but that's due to the light
amplification that's going on in this
PVS14.
and passing overhead is one of the
numerous examples of commercial air
traffic that we can see in this
airspace. Now, if there were any kind of
exotic flight tests going on, you would
think there would be some sort of
permanently restricted airspace or TFRs
put in place here.
I also came equipped for taking some
thermographic imagery on the off chance
that I might spot some unusual heat
signatures either on the ground or in
the air. I can't say I had any luck in
that department.
All
right. Well, good morning everybody. So,
now that there's some daylight, I'm
going to go ahead and pull out the long
telephoto lens and kind of pan around
the valley a little bit just to see if I
spot anything interesting. Um, I do see
some power lines over across the way.
So, I'll zoom in and take a closer look
at those. After I'm done wrapping up
with that, I will go ahead and take you
guys to the next destination. So, the
power lines over on that ridge across
from me are like the only sign of
civilization out here really. So, I
figured people want me to zoom in and
take a closer look. I'll kind of pan
along here just to see if there's
anything unusual. If it looks like
they're running into a location, that
would be unusual. I don't really see
anything yet. They seem to just be
running south towards the town of
Sedona.
There is some kind of little uh row of I
don't know if those are tower stubs or
what. I can't quite tell what those are.
And just to give you a look at some of
the geology in this area, as you can see
here, this almost looks like uh almost
looks like those S4 hangers in that
photo that's been going around. This
just goes to show that you can
definitely get some pretty geometric
shapes out of natural rock formations.
Unless these are secret hangers, I guess
you never know.
So, I ended up spending a couple
additional nights at the canyon, which
went pretty much like the first. The
only airborne objects I could see were
aircraft, and satellites, and the
terrestrial viewing just led to me
staring at dirt, rocks, and shrubs. So,
I decided I needed to get eyes on
something a little more interesting,
something more concrete, if you will.
So, I set my sights on the cement plant
in the town of Clarkdale. Now, this
cement plant is the place that
proponents of the secret underground
base theory say is a front operation of
some kind that contains an entrance and
underground tunnel to Secret Mountain.
I've seen claims floating around online,
unfortunately, not backed up by any
photo or video evidence, of some
unusually high security measures and
guards patrolling this perimeter.
Now, I suppose this is as good a time as
any to go into another issue I have with
Ross Koulthart's NewsNation piece, and
that is the claims surrounding the
property ownership here. Early in the
segment, they state that the plant is
owned by Martin Marietta Materials. But
later on they suddenly start equating
that with being owned by Loheed Martin.
Despite the fact that while they share a
historical corporate lineage, the
current Loheed Martin has no
relationship to Martin Marietta
Materials, which is an entirely separate
publicly traded company that was spun
off in 1996.
Further problems arise when you actually
look up who owns this cement plant and
find that Martin Marietta Materials does
not in fact own it at all. And in fact,
it is owned by the Salt River Materials
Group, which is a business venture of
the Salt River Puma Maricopa Indian
Community. Not exactly a defense
contractor.
What Martin Marietta does own is a
neighboring downstream readymix
facility, but even that they didn't
purchase until 2021, along with a number
of other downstream facilities in both
California and Arizona, many decades
after these supposed hidden subterranean
tunnels were alleged to have been
constructed. This is a normal type of
facility for Martin Marietta Materials
to own given that their business is in
building materials. So, I struggled to
get on board with the attempts to paint
this as somehow unusual in and of
itself. While admittedly I was a bit
frustrated with the Loheed Martin label
that seemed to be erroneously ascribed
here, I did want to get some eyes on
this plant as I'm a big believer in
seeing things for myself before forming
any opinions and I always enjoy a good
exploration.
Rolling right up to the front gate of
the cement plan only gets us a view of
some nondescript no trespassing signs.
So, I wanted to find a way to do a
little better reconnaissance. There's a
number of public roads that go up into
some hills near Jerome that can get us a
telephoto view of the plant, but I
decided to go for something a little
more unique here. When poking around in
my various mapping apps, including some
that show land ownership, I was drawn to
this area back here around the back of
the cement plant property where it butts
up against some vast acreage of
undeveloped land that belongs to the
national forest. Given that this is a
normal working cement plant with normal
employees who would have to be unaware
of any of the secret going on in support
of an underground base, I figured the
more remote areas of the property would
be a good place to poke around. I'm
interested in these areas in particular
since they are far removed from any
other infrastructure on the property.
And it looks like we have some buildings
and a loading dock of some sort kind of
out in the middle of nowhere.
That at least has my curiosity peaked.
Another point of interest is the fact
that there are numerous dirt roads in
this section of public national forest
land, but they all seem to originate
from the private property restricted
area of the cement plant. So only people
that could reasonably access these
parcels of public land would be those
with cement plant access. I'm a bit of
an afficionado of difficult to access
public land. So this is where I intend
to head today.
I got to work mapping out a route that
would have me driving along the edge of
this old historic mine and hopefully
lead me to a place where I could begin
my ascent into these hills on foot. I
began following the network of roads I
had mapped out through the towns of
Cottonwood and Clarkdale. But of course,
I soon ran into trouble. It appears a
new fence and warning signs had appeared
across this road since the last street
view photo was taken. I contemplated
just parking here and scaling these
fences on foot, but the warning signs
looked like they meant business, and the
prevalence of surveillance cameras
around the area led me to explore other
options.
Pretty
soon, it became apparent that other
options in this case meant heading to an
even more remote area and foring a
river. So, that's exactly what I did.
Good thing it was a pretty hot day
today, so I did not mind a little dip.
All right. Well, this will have to do.
It's going to involve foring a river,
but I'm going to head through this way.
There's all these signs that say no
motor vehicles, but it doesn't say
anything about pedestrian traffic. So,
I'm going to park here, head for the
river, and uh hopefully I'll be able to
find a way up those cliffs. So, looks
like there's some washes or ravines that
traverse the cliffs uh kind of near the
railroad tracks.
All
right, this looks pretty doable. I'm
going to make my way down these rocks
and then there's kind of some islands in
the middle of the river. So, I'm hoping
that means the water's going to be not
any deeper than than knee deep. So,
yeah. Let's see what we got here.
Heat up here.
All right. So, I'm looking for a way to
make it up into this little uh this
little canyon up here that I have marked
on the map. So far, there's not a lot of
good entry points. We do have uh
something here.
Once safely to the other side of the
river, I stumbled on my first sign of
some infrastructure, namely a natural
gas pipeline.
There was a trail of signs that led out
from the forest, so I followed those to
get to the canyon that I needed to
ascend.
The next obstacle in my path was a small
barb wire fence. And on the other side
of that was a train trestle that I would
have to cross underneath.
Navigating my way up the canyon with
only my offline mapping app to guide me
as there was no marked trail or
anything. I soon came upon my first sign
of danger on this hike.
Oh
I know many of you viewers out there who
may not be super familiar with desert
environments often ask if I ever run
into rattlesnakes out here. And well, as
you can see here, the answer is a
resounding yes. I decided to slowly back
away from this angry guy and find an
alternate route up the mountain.
Once I was safely on the other side of
this first set of hills, I ran into the
first of the trails that seems to
originate from the cement plant and then
winds its way through the public land
here. Again, I'm not totally sure what
the purpose of a trail like this would
be since it basically is only accessible
from the cement plant and also doesn't
seem to lead anywhere in particular. In
fact, it just dead ends on this cliff.
Perhaps it's an old remnant from when
the cement plant was first being
constructed. Or maybe it has something
to do with the natural gas pipeline in
the area. Not totally sure on that one.
Here along the trail is a small pile of
shell casings. Definitely not an unusual
site on public land as target shooting
is a common hobby. It's only slightly
noteworthy because of how difficult this
section of public land is to access.
In the skies above is the unmistakable
drone of a military C130. If I had to
guess, likely headed to the Sedona
airport. I don't have good signal in
this little canyon here, so I cannot
verify that on ADSB, but that is
probably the most reasonable assumption.
I finally reached the top of this last
set of hills, which was easier said than
done given the 100° heat.
Once reaching the top, I'm greeted by
the expansive Clark Dale cement plant.
Let's pull out the telephoto lens, zoom
in, and take a closer look.
The first thing I notice upon zooming in
is this white pickup truck down here,
parked very far away from the facility
proper, but still within the cement
plant property.
It appears to be parked right on the
edge where the cement plant property
meets the national forest property
behind it. What its purpose is, I won't
pretend to know, but there will be some
more activity with this truck later in
the day, so make a mental note of it for
now. I certainly won't claim to be an
expert in cement plant operations or
infrastructure or anything like that,
but I spent quite a bit of time
observing the activity going on below
me, and I can't say that I saw anything
about the cement plant itself that
appeared unusual.
As I often do with things like this,
I'll put this one out to the audience
for those who might have more expertise
than me. If you notice anything in the
footage that sticks out to you as
unusual, feel free to note it in the
comments. As I said previously, I am
quite sure that this is a normal
operating cement plant given that they
have real clients, real employees, and
are pretty well connected to the local
economy.
I'm still fully on public national
forest land, but I'm walking towards the
cement plant boundary. There is this
strange concrete square that I honestly
don't know what the purpose of. If you
do know, feel free to shout it out in
the comments, but it is fully on the
national forest side of the property. In
fact, I'll walk up to this sign right
here and show you where the property
line is exactly. So, behind this sign is
National Forest and the side that I'm on
just barely is the cement plant
property.
So, I'm walking here along the boundary
line. Here is an old faded no
trespassing sign that does mark the
entrance to the cement plant.
Can barely read this one.
This road does look like it's seen a
little bit of use.
Over
here we have a collection of appears to
be survey markers. And again, this sign
does mark the boundary to the national
forest,
separating it from the cement plant.
Just to emphasize again, this little
patch of national forest land is
basically only accessible from this road
that goes directly down there to the
cement plant.
These tire tracks, you can tell, were uh
coming up from the plant.
So clearly employees do travel up here.
Can't say for what purpose.
Could just be when they're bored on
their lunch break. Who knows?
Some sort of old structure here.
This is right on the boundary line. I'm
not sure if it's technically on the
national forest side.
So, right down there is that far removed
loading dock type area that I wanted to
get a closer look at.
Unfortunately, without trespassing, this
is the closest that I can physically
get, but I will launch the drone from
here to do some flyovers.
I've launched the drone from the very
edge of public land. Doing a fly over
here. We can see a collection of
semi-trailers and some small temporary
portable building setup.
Looks like some tanks as well. I do
believe there's some staff on site cuz I
heard a car door slam which I would
guess belongs to that white Ford pickup
there by that temporary building.
Looks to be mainly an equipment storage
area. Nothing immediately jumps out to
me as unusual, but again, if you notice
anything in this footage, feel free to
chime in in the comments.
That door is open there.
Here we have that loading dock, which as
I said before is very far removed from
any other infrastructure on the
property, which I found interesting when
looking at the Google Earth satellite
imagery. One possible theory could be
that this is an area for handling
explosives used in the blasting process
here at the uh cement plant.
That way if there were any sort of
disaster, the damage would be minimal
given that it's located so far away from
other critical infrastructure.
I'm heading towards that other flat area
that I highlighted on the Google Earth
imagery. Not 100% sure what this is.
Looks like some sort of staging area.
Lot of tire tracks. So, this does get
used by vehicles at least sometimes. One
interesting thing to note is that there
is a large concrete square. It looks to
be about the same size as the one I'm
currently standing on, though this one
is not on public land.
Circling back around, it was my
intention to get to a little bit lower
altitude and do another pass over this
section.
Unfortunately, as I was getting my drone
into place,
I got hit with a return to home, which I
know a lot of people will probably jump
to conclusions about this being a
potential countermeasure. However, I
strongly believe this to be terrain
related as my negative altitude here
caused me to dip pretty far behind these
hills and I do believe it was just a
natural signal loss due to the terrain.
Well, after retrieving my drone, I'd
been poking around here at this remote
perimeter section for most of the day,
and I hadn't triggered any kind of
unusual security response.
I decided at this point to get back on
the telephoto lens and check back in
with that white pickup truck that I
noted when I first arrived to see if
there was any activity down in that
area, which again is right on the
perimeter of the National Forest
property and the cement plant property.
I did notice something interesting after
I was watching the truck for a little
bit. So, as I mentioned earlier in the
video when I had the satellite imagery
up, there's this network of trails that
branches off into the national forest
land that really doesn't go anywhere.
Um, and the only way to access that area
is by driving through the cement plant.
As I was watching the truck, I looked
over at this gate and I could see that
two people were walking out of the
national forest land and entering the
cement plant property, which is
interesting again because there's really
nothing out there and they must have
been out there in the forest all day.
And apparently they worked at the cement
plant because they clearly have access
to the property.
These people certainly don't look like
any kind of security. They're not armed.
They're not wearing body armor, anything
like that. So, it doesn't really strike
me as suspicious. But I am curious what
their role here at the cement plant
would be, given that they basically just
wandered out of the the national forest,
which I thought was strange.
At first, I thought this guy was talking
into a radio, but upon importing the
footage to my computer and blowing it
up, it appears that he's actually just
hitting a vape.
The two guys made their way down the
dirt road to their truck and eventually
drove off. I have no idea if this is
evidence for anything. I certainly can't
say it's evidence for any kind of an
underground base.
The only interesting thing to note is
that they were basically coming from a
place that there is no other
infrastructure or buildings on the
national forest property entered the
cement plant property and drove off. So
it would be safe to say that they are
employees of the cement plant. I just
have no idea what their role might be.
Giving any definitive answers would just
be me jumping to conclusions. But I will
say that they were out there for quite a
bit of time. So, I don't think it was
just two guys out on their lunch break
going for a stroll.
Just as I was packing up my equipment to
leave, I was treated by a very low buzz
from a V22 Osprey. Other than the C130
cargo plane I'd seen earlier, this was
the first direct evidence of military
activity in this airspace that I'd seen
today.
All right. So, for the third and final
destination in today's video, I'll be
taking you guys to a place that might
sort of contradict something I said
earlier in the video, which is that I'm
going to try and avoid any of the
paranormal locations around Sedona. The
paranormal stuff is just a little bit
outside the scope of what I do on this
channel. And given that I can't say I'm
a big believer in it, I figure it's best
to stick strictly to the military claims
for now. But for the next segment, I'm
going to be taking you guys to the
Bradshaw Ranch, which is known as being
somewhat of a paranormal hot spot in
local lore here in Sedona. But it also
directly ties into the military related
claims. So, I think it's important to
hit this location while I'm here.
One of the original people to popularize
this subterranean-based narrative is
longtime Sedona resident Tom Dongo, who
Ross also interviewed in one of the
segments of his Sedona series, which
like the others I will have linked down
in the description for you to view
yourselves and make up your own mind on.
In fact, he seems to be sort of the
godfather of all things mysterious when
it comes to Sedona lore, and he wrote
extensively on the paranormal phenomenon
at the Bradshaw Ranch and elsewhere in
the region. I won't pretend to be an
expert in the history of the Bradshaw
ranch. But to give a general summary, it
was formerly owned by Hollywood stuntman
Bob Bradshaw and his wife Linda before
it was purchased by the US Forest
Service in the year 2000 with the help
of the Trust for Public Land. The site
currently is fenced off and restricted
housing a project called the Southwest
Experimental Garden Array or SEGA
operated under a special use permit by
the Northern Arizona University.
Jeremiah Horstman and others highlighted
in the news nation segments alleged that
this environmental research project is a
front for something else and the land is
actually restricted by some other
government or military project tied to
this subterranean base and that the
tunnel from the cement plant to secret
mountain in fact passes right under the
ranch itself. As with the previous
claims, I definitely make no
endorsements of their validity, but I'll
be heading up to this ranch at night to
explore and see what happens. Maybe this
will finally trigger some response from
the elusive security personnel. Who
knows? I'm genuinely not sure what I'm
going to find here, if there's going to
be anyone on site or if it's going to be
totally deserted or what.
The remote back roads leaving Sedona
quickly turned into dirt 4x4 trails and
wound their way up towards Bradshaw
Ranch in an area called Hartwell Canyon.
The beginning of the road had quite a
few dispersed campers in the designated
Cookanino National Forest camping areas,
but driving for a while, I've long since
left those behind, and my surroundings
are now completely quiet and free of any
signs of civilization.
Well, I made it to the ranch. It uh
looks totally deserted. There's no other
cars here or anything. And uh it's
pretty quiet. I hear some kind of a real
distant metallic kind of a clanging
sound like something blowing in the
wind, but there really isn't any wind.
So, I'll have to see what that's all
about. I'm going to start by rolling
with the uh PVS14
to navigate just to keep the visible
light to a minimum until I get a little
bit closer to the uh the fence and then
we'll see what's happening.
One thing that first stuck out to me
upon arrival is that this area didn't
look like a very high security facility
or anything. There was a pretty tall
double fence here with a padlocked gate,
but no threatening warning signs or
anything like that. There is the
infamous camera on that tower there. We
can see through the night vision, which
is pointed at the buildings over there
rather than pointed outward.
The gates around the perimeter seem to
have three padlocks. One of them is
labeled US Forest Service. Presumably,
one of the other ones belongs to
Northern Arizona University, and I'm not
sure who the third one belongs to.
Through the thermal camera, I can get a
good look at some of the ranch buildings
down there.
Definitely looks pretty abandoned.
Smashed windows, debris laying around.
Notice there are quite a few buildings
on the property.
One of the weirder things I spy is a
circle of apparently office chairs.
water tank and a windmill, which is
likely responsible for the metal
clanking sound I was hearing when I
pulled up.
Flying up above the ranch is a bog
standard commercial aircraft. just to
show you guys what it looks like through
the thermal imager if you're not
familiar.
Not only did I not find this property to
be particularly high security, but large
sections of the barbwire fence were
completely gone or knocked over. So, I
decided to pop in for some stealthy
exploration, primarily relying on the
night vision just to keep visible light
to a minimum in case there was anybody
watching.
This odd circle of office chairs
definitely gives the place a liinal
vibe. Very strange.
Numerous old buildings dotted the
property. And I did go in every single
one just to see what I could find.
Mostly junk, rat droppings, and probably
haunt virus.
The largest building on the property
looks like it does see some visitation
occasionally
as it's a bit more cleaned up.
Some sporadic graffiti on the walls as
well, as you'll see here in a minute.
couch beds pulled out almost like
somebody was sleeping in here.
And while I didn't encounter any
resistance, I did manage to piss off a
few birds who started to dive bomb me
until I fled the building. Quite the
innovative security measures, I'll say.
Several of the shacks had some odd
things left outside, like partially
melted candles or this weird shrine.
All right. So, I spent a few hours at
the Bradshaw Ranch till pretty late in
the night and then I was wrapping up and
got to my car and I was heading back up
the trail and I saw some headlights
coming back down the trail towards me
and I thought maybe, just maybe, I had
finally triggered some kind of a
security response from these supposed
insignless security contractors that
patrol this area. And well,
unfortunately, that was not the case. It
was in fact a UFO tour group, one of
many that operated in Sedona. And um not
only did I pass that group, but when I
got back up to the top of the trail that
I was on, there was another group there
of UFO tourists all staring through
PVS14 night vision goggles looking at
the same aircraft and low Earth orbit
satellites that I had been staring at
this whole trip. And it was honestly at
this point that the whole thing started
to feel a little bit ridiculous to me.
Sedona has this reputation of the sort
of new age tourists and there's so many
businesses in town that I feel like not
only cater to that crowd but kind of
take advantage of that crowd a little
bit. And it's at this point in the video
where some of the UFO crowd that I know
watches my channel may get a little bit
upset at my take. But I promise you,
don't click off the tab yet. Don't take
to the comments calling me a government
shill just yet. Watch to the end of the
video cuz my take on this whole Sedona
thing is going to be a little bit more
nuanced than you actually might think.
So, in Ross Colart's NewsNation series
about Sedona, one of the segments he
interviews one of these UFO tourist
group leaders, uh, her name is Melinda
Leslie, and she seems to be one of the
more prominent UFO tour group leaders.
in the interview, which again I will
have linked below as with all the other
media that I'm referencing here. Uh in
the interview she mentions that she sees
what she calls full structured craft.
She sees lights that behave anomalously
in the sense that they stop or change
direction. Unfortunately, in the media
that we see here, we don't see any of
that. All we see are lights moving
linearly, which again, if a light moves
linearly, if it behaves exactly like a
satellite, a razor suggests that it's
probably a satellite. So, I really
wanted to see what some of these more
anomalous craft supposedly were. Now,
she claims in the interview that that
they see UFOs out there every night,
which that is lucky considering on her
advertisement here, she says that you
see UFOs or you get your money back. So,
there's definitely a little bit of a
financial incentive to to paint
everything as a UFO, which I think is a
common theme that we're going to see
here. I will note that in addition to
UFO tours, she offers to teach you how
to bend spoons with your mind.

I do a psychokinesis uh spoon bending
class where you learn how to bend metal
with your mind.
Although, I noticed she doesn't offer a
similar guarantee with that one like she
does with the UFOs. But anyways, I went
through uh various public social media
postings about these UFO tours just to
see if I could find anything that
behaved anomalously. And well,
unfortunately, I came up empty in that
department. I'll give you a little
sample here of some of the commentary
that you'll find on these UFO tours.
And like we can't see
big power up. Look at that. Right over
the hill.
Wow.
Yes. Look how big that is to your eyes.
Now that's like government canyon.
That's got to be right there. That's
Intense.
Okay. And then there's one over here too
coming up. It is already dimming. Look
at that.
So good.
You think they have like headlights, but
then like they're turning right so we
can't see them.
No, no, no, no. These are powering up.
That's No. Oh, you don't know about
amber?
Well, I do, but I'm like
Amber means there's an ionized field. is
they're bleeding a huge huge electrical
field so massive it's ionizing the air
around it.
So what we're seeing here is movement
that's completely consistent with
satellites moving linearly through that
flare window low on the horizon. But
instead the commentary we're getting is
honestly just kind of completely word
salad about uh ionizing the air and
stuff like that. Um, and it's not my
intention to spend a lot of time calling
specific people out for this, but given
that this is being amplified nationally
in the media, I do think it's important
to call this stuff out. And one thing
that I think is important to understand
when you're when you're out skywatching,
whether it's on one of these UFO tours
or whether you're just doing it on your
own, is the fact that if something is in
orbit like a satellite, it is not going
to show up on a thermal camera like this
AGM or this infrared unit here. Um
whereas it will obviously show up in
analog night vision like a PVS14 or
PVS7. So, if you want to tell if what
you're seeing is something closer to
you, like an aircraft taking off from a
canyon, that will absolutely show up in
a thermal camera. You may not get a good
outline of the aircraft depending on the
distance, but you will see something
coming up from the canyon. Whereas a
satellite, if it's in orbit, you're
going to see absolutely nothing. So, I
would uh I would extend an invite to
Melinda Leslie and anyone else running a
UFO tour group. If you are actually
interested in factchecking what you're
seeing through your night vision through
a PVS14 or PVS7, I would highly suggest
incorporating thermal. Um you may
unfortunately have to give some people
their money back if you keep that that
guarantee of seeing UFOs, but um I I
would like to hope that all of us uh are
interested in the facts and interested
in in the truth, even if we may go about
that in different ways. So, I decided to
head over to Jeremiah Horseman's
Facebook page to try and find any
photographic evidence of this supposed
underground base. Now, I was looking for
photos of entrances, photos of guards,
really anything that would suggest that
there was something anomalous out in the
national forest near Sedona. And I
actually thought I may have struck gold
here because I found something
incredibly interesting. So, what we have
here is a post about this Northern
Arizona rumored military installation.
And this one, unlike most of them,
actually seems to be accompanied by some
photographic evidence. Clearly, we have
a warning sign here. So, I was actually
incredibly interested cuz this seemed
like it was the first actual piece of
photographic evidence of military
infrastructure. Uh there's a lot of
comments on this post asking where it's
located, if it was at Camp Navajo, which
is a National Guard depot nearby. Uh the
only response we get from Jeremiah is
that it's an unmarked road access in
northern Arizona presumably alleging
that it's a road access to this
underground base. Now I was looking at
this picture for a while and I actually
realized I had seen it before. I
couldn't right off the bat remember
where but I was thinking and thinking
and then I realized because I'd spent a
lot of time in Flagstaff before. This is
actually the entrance road to the Naval
Observatory Flagstaff Station or NOFS.
We can pull this up here on the
satellite view and get a look at the
facility. And then if we drop the street
view marker right here, we can actually
find the exact sign that is being
photographed here.
Now, he alleges that this is an unmarked
road access. And as we can see here,
it's very much not unmarked. It's
clearly labeled on Google Maps. And if
we go to street view at the beginning of
the road, there's clearly a sign marking
this as the Naval Observatory Flagstaff
Station. So, this is only a small
sampling of the various breadcrumb
trails to nowhere that I'd been chasing
down on the internet. Needless to say, I
was pretty frustrated. The more I dug,
the more I kept finding more and more
extraordinary claims. Unfortunately,
these extraordinary claims were never
backed up by any extraordinary evidence
or even evidence of the base's very
existence, just more smoke and mirrors.
You might assume at this point that I'll
arrive at the conclusion that this whole
Sedona militarybased thing is nothing
more than a hoax or a long-running urban
legend, but that's actually not totally
the case. Now, there's one common thread
here, and that's the supposed sightings
of military aircraft and personnel in
the area going back decades. I wanted to
see if there was any validity to these
sightings. So, I wanted to ask around
outside of this core group of believers
to try and find normal everyday people
who might have seen something. So, I
started reaching out to some people who
I knew spent time hiking in the
Cookanito National Forest. And most
people said that they hadn't seen
anything, but a couple people actually
did tell me that they saw Blackhawk
helicopters appear to land in both
Sycamore and Secret canyons. Now, these
people could be mistaken. They might
have just seen low flybys or even
training missions that involve
touchandgo landings or search and
rescue, things like that. In fact,
military helicopter flights are not
inherently unusual in this area given
that the Sedona airport has a refueling
contract with the military and is a
frequent stopover for flights. There's
also the nearby Camp Navajo up in
Belmont, which just a few weeks ago put
out this notice about increased
helicopter activity due to some training
taking place here.
The thing is, I'm not sure all of the
sightings can actually be attributed to
routine flights. As I've mentioned
before, I used to work in Northern
Arizona in a previous career. And the
other day, I happened to be texting a
friend and former co-orker, and I
off-handedly mentioned that I was
working on a Sedona video. Just then, to
my surprise, he actually relayed to me
that he had seen some odd activity when
doing some overnight camping in the
area, including what he described as
black helicopters landing at the quote
unquote quarry near Jerome, which
immediately I realized he meant the
Clarkdale cement plant that I had just
been staking out. Keep in mind I had not
mentioned the Clarkdale cement plant to
him previously in this conversation. He
brought that up completely
independently.
He also mentioned seeing some sort of
out ofplace security personnel possibly
driving a Ford F-150 near a resort up in
one of the canyons. Now, I can't
personally think of any reason why
Blackhawks should be landing at the
cement plant given that it's private
property, not national forest land. So
unless they had some sort of contract
with the owners to conduct training
there, there might actually be some sort
of mystery on our hands here.
I almost wonder if decades of smoke and
mirrors and deliberate misinformation
might actually be concealing a kernel of
truth and that there is some sort of
clandestine military activity out in
these remote canyons. As with
everything, my intentions are to stay
curious, but remain skeptical and take
an evidence-based approach to any
further investigation that I might do in
this area.
So, one thing I can't help but notice is
that a lot of the more extravagant
claims about this place have a lot of
similarity to some of the more
extravagant claims about other places
like Doulce, New Mexico, which may not
be a coincidence. But anyways, if you've
had any interesting experiences out
here, be sure to drop me a message, drop
me an email. If you have any
photographic or video evidence, even
better. Anyways, until next time
everybody. Uncandy Expeditions signing
off.