The Flying Saucer Has No Plaque, and That's the Point

Walk through downtown Mars on a Friday morning before ten o'clock and the flying saucer is just sitting there, silver and squat in its little parklet, doing nothing in particular. No placard explains it. No historical marker gives you a date or a reason. If you didn't already know the story, you'd have no way to learn it standing on the sidewalk. Then, somewhere behind the storefronts, a whistle sounds. It's not a UFO. It's the 10 a.m. run of the Mars Shortline Railroad, a few blocks away on Brickyard Road, and it means the volunteers are open for the day.

That contrast, the unexplained saucer and the very explainable train, is the whole story of how this town actually works. Mars didn't get its space theme from a tourism board or a branding consultant. It got it from a handful of named residents who decided, on their own time and often with their own tools, that the joke was worth building. Understanding who those people were, and what they left behind, tells you more about living in Mars than any list of "things to do" ever could.

Nobody Was Assigned to Build a Spaceship

The saucer itself is not a manufactured attraction. It was welded together from two old oil tanks in the early 1990s by a group of local businessmen, led by residents Shorty Davis and Bill Swaney, around the same period the region had a run of UFO and crop circle reports. It weighs close to 3,000 pounds, which is one reason it has never been stolen, and it has no plaque, no historic marker, and no official backstory posted anywhere near it. It just sits in the town square next to the ship's bell from the decommissioned USS Mars and a peace pole reading "May Peace Prevail on the Earth," repainted every so often in whatever color someone feels like that year.

The town leaned into the joke everywhere else too. Storefront windows have little green aliens in them. Business names around the square include Mars Hardware, Mars Gourmet, and Mars National Bank. The high school's teams play as the Fightin' Planets. None of this reads as a marketing campaign because none of it was one. It's what happens when a town takes its own name seriously as a running gag for thirty years instead of workshopping it into a slogan.

The Volunteers Who Beat a Tornado

A few blocks from the saucer, the Mars Area History & Landmarks Society keeps the same do-it-yourself spirit going with actual buildings instead of oil drums. Their campus on Brickyard Road holds the restored 1897 B&O Station, a 1920s B&O caboose, a 1931 U.S. Mail truck, and the 1907 Adams Shortline Station, a passenger waiting station that survived because of one specific decision made by one specific person.

In 1985, longtime society member Bill Swaney and then-mayor Lester Kennedy located the old Adams Station sitting in a farmer's field, where it had been used as a storage shed since 1932. They struck a deal, hauled it back to Mars, and set it down. Four hours later, a series of tornadoes tore through the area and destroyed the shed they'd left behind in its place. The waiting station they'd just rescued is one of only two known survivors from that original trolley line.

None of that history costs anything to see. The society's grounds are open to the public every Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. year round, and from late May through the end of October, weather permitting, they run the Shortline Railroad on the same Friday schedule, pulling small train cars around the track that circles the campus. It's a volunteer operation, staffed by people who show up because they want to, and it runs on exactly one day of the week. If you've only ever driven past the caboose, Friday morning is the window that actually opens the gate.

A Brewery That Sets Its Own Terms

Stick City Brewing Company, over on Irvine Street, fits the same pattern. It's a family-owned operation run by owner and brewer Nick Salkeld, and it holds the distinction of being Pennsylvania's first brewery to join the 1% for the Planet movement, meaning at least one percent of every sale goes to environmental nonprofits working on conservation and clean waterways. The logo features the Eastern hemlock, Pennsylvania's state tree, which is not a detail a marketing firm hands you. It's a detail a brewer picks because it means something to him.

Stick City keeps its own hours too: closed Monday and Tuesday, open midafternoon Wednesday through Friday, and open from midday on weekends. In summer, the patio expands with cornhole boards and rotating food trucks. Once the weather turns, that same space contracts back down to something smaller and quieter. The beer names lean local rather than generic: one recent release is a nod to the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, the brutal 34-mile hiking event that runs through the region every June. It's not an aesthetic choice. It's a brewery that assumes its customers already know what the Rachel Carson Trail is, because most of them do.

Put the two rhythms together and you get an actual weekly schedule most people never think to write down:

• Friday, any time before 2 p.m.: the history society's buildings are open, and from late May to late October, the Shortline train is running
• Wednesday through Friday afternoons and evenings: Stick City is pouring, patio open in warm weather
• Saturday and Sunday from midday: Stick City again, with a bigger crowd and often a food truck parked out front

That's the calendar a resident actually uses. A visitor gets one photo next to the saucer and moves on. Someone who lives here gets a Friday train whistle, a Saturday patio, and eventually a reason to explain both to a friend visiting from out of town.

The One Saturday Everyone Shows Up

Once a year, that low-key weekly rhythm gets swallowed by something much bigger. Mars Applefest takes over the Towne Square, on a lot made available by NexTier Bank, on Saturday, October 3, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine. This year marks the festival's 41st run. It's organized entirely by the Rich-Mar Rotary Clubs, working with the Borough of Mars, and it regularly draws more than 9,000 people and over 140 vendors selling everything from handmade crafts to produce grown on nearby farms. Admission and parking are both free, and the Rotary encourages attendees to consider a donation to ShelterBox USA, the disaster relief organization the club supports.

Like everything else on this list, Applefest isn't a borough-run event with a government budget behind it. It's a Rotary production, staffed by the same kind of volunteer energy that rescued the Adams Station and welded the saucer together three decades ago. The pattern holds: in Mars, the things worth showing up for were built by people who decided to build them, not by an office that scheduled them.

There's an even rarer version of that same spirit two towns over from ordinary. Every 687 Earth days, roughly one Martian year, the town partners with NASA and local scientists to throw the Mars New Year Festival, a two-day event with rover demonstrations and hands-on STEM activities for kids. The last one landed in June 2025, which puts the math on the next one somewhere in the spring of 2027. It's not an annual fixture, which is exactly why residents who catch it tend to remember it.

Knowing the Schedule Is the Local Advantage

None of this changes what Mars looks like from a car window. The saucer still photographs the same way whether you know Shorty Davis's name or not. But knowing that the train only runs on Fridays, that the brewery's patio has a season, and that the calendar's biggest day just landed a confirmed date, is the difference between passing through a quirky town and actually living inside its rhythm. The people who built these things did it without waiting for permission. Showing up on the right day is the only thing left for the rest of us to figure out.

If you're already settled into life here, keep that Friday morning window on your radar this fall before the Shortline season wraps up. And if Mars is somewhere you're still weighing, whether you already know the saucer's backstory or you're just now hearing it, Chelsea Dolny knows this town well beyond its town square. Let's Connect.