Burial
In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico, reported in a series of articles that between 10 and 20[16] semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas, were crushed and buried at the landfill to the south of city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from Atari 2600 to Atari 5200 games,[17] but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case.[18] Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned material to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff."[16]
On September 27, 1983, the news service Tribune Wires reported that "people watching the operation said it included cassettes [sic] of the popular video games E.T., Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, the consoles used to convey the games to television screens, and high-priced personal computers."[19] The news service Knight Ridder further reported on the looting of the dump on September 28 by local kids, stating "kids in this town of 25,000 began robbing the Atari grave, coming up with cartridges of such games as E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Defender, and Berzerk."[20]
On September 28, 1983, The New York Times reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility.[21] The reports noted that the site was guarded to prevent reporters and the public from affirming the contents. The Times article did not specify the games being destroyed, but subsequent reports generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T.[2] Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News seems to imply some of the cartridges were E.T., but then follows with a humorous interpretation of E.T. meaning "Extra-territorial" and never specifically mentions the game.[16]
Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump."[18] Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing, with one commissioner stating that the area did not want to become "an industrial waste dump for El Paso."[16] The local manager ordered an end to the dumping shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then-mayor, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."[18]
Cultural symbolism and speculation
All of these factors led to wide speculation that most of the 3.5 million unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in concrete.[22] It had also been reported that prototypes for the proposed Atari Mindlink controller system were disposed of at the site,[23] which only further fueled speculation, since Atari Museum owner Curt Vendel owns and possesses the Mindlink prototypes.[24] Writing for the Pacific Historical Review, John Wills speculated that location's place in the public psyche—its proximity to the sites of both the Trinity nuclear test and Roswell UFO incident—aided the popularity of the story.[25]
The conflicting information surrounding the burial led to the claim of it being an "E.T. Dump" being referred to as an urban legend;[26]
