We often hear tales of people who embark on quixotic searches for elusive, illusory objects, but it’s rare that those investigators actually find what they’re looking for. That’s why the story of an urban explorer who finally uncovered the crash site of an A-12 Oxcart near Area 51 is so satisfying.

The story of the death of CIA pilot Walter Ray, and the later search for the remote Nevada crash site where his aircraft came down, emerged in Popular Science in 2021. On January 5, 1967, Walter Ray, a pilot for the CIA, took off from Area 51 in his plane, an A-12 Oxcart. The predecessor to the SR-71 Blackbird, Lockheed’s Skunk Works built the A-12 for the same purpose: strategic, high-altitude reconnaissance.

The A-12 was shorter and lighter than the SR-71, and the CIA says it reached a documented maximum of 2,208 mph at 90,000 feet during a 1965 flight. The CIA’s own comparison now separates that A-12 benchmark from the SR-71’s official records: 2,193 mph for a piloted operational jet and 85,069 feet for altitude.

When the A-12 retired in 1968, it wasn’t only because of the SR-71’s longer range; according to CIA history, the agency was also balancing the rise of CORONA reconnaissance satellites, the dangers of overflights in the wake of a U-2 being shot down in 1960, and the awkwardness of maintaining both a covert A-12 fleet and an overt SR-71 fleet with overlapping jobs. The SR-71 flew until 1999.

Lockheed built just 15 A-12s in total, and the tiny fleet suffered several crashes. Three A-12s crashed during the first years of pre-operational testing, with the pilots ejecting safely, according to CIA historian David Robarge. Ray’s fatal crash followed in January 1967; pilot Jack Weeks died in another A-12 crash in June 1968.

Ray’s aircraft had a fuel-gauging problem that led to fuel starvation and engine flameout, according to Roadrunners Internationale. Ray ejected, but the man-seat separation sequence failed, leaving him strapped to the seat at impact.

Although the U.S. government located the remains of both the aircraft and Ray, the crash site itself was a secret. Officials knew about it, and Area 51 researchers whispered about it, but it wasn’t on any public CIA map.

In the late 1990s, an urban explorer named Jeremy Krans latched onto the legend of the crash and vowed to locate it. Over the years, Krans slowly, but surely eliminated places it might be, actually visiting these remote sites in the high Nevada desert.

In 2009, Krans finally located the 42-year-old debris field, scattered across an otherwise unremarkable length of desert floor.

But the story doesn’t end there. The CIA later recognized Ray’s sacrifice on the famous Memorial Wall at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and Krans returned to the crash site to build a memorial of his own, including a mini A-12 Oxcart. (While the CIA still doesn’t list any official public coordinates for the site, the place is no longer hidden inside the Area 51 research world: By 2023, Dreamland Resort had published a trip report describing a successful visit to Ray’s memorial.)

Earlier this year, the CIA published a storyon the completed restoration of its A-12 display at Langley, describing it as a memorial to Ray and Weeks, two men who flew one of the most extreme aircraft ever built.