Pendarvis was not an engineer, an architect, or a wealthy eccentric. He was a man with a vision and access to a junkyard's worth of materials. The main saucer measured 46 feet across, its hull cobbled together from plywood, fiberglass sheets, and plastic panels. Inside, visitors found a labyrinth of mechanical and electronic salvage parts -- metal scraps, vehicle batteries, tangles of wire -- alongside the surprisingly homey amenities. Small hatches ringed the upper rim of the saucer, designated as alien entry points. Pendarvis claimed the entire structure used only eight screws, with the larger engineering held together by the saucer's own weight and interlocking design. The motorized columns were supposed to raise and lower the craft, though their functionality was more aspirational than practical. The chaos of the interior was deliberate, in its way: Pendarvis saw it as a working space, always in progress, always being improved for future guests from the stars.

For its first few years, the UFO Welcome Center was a local curiosity, charging a dollar for admission. Word spread. In 2001, The Daily Show dispatched Stephen Colbert to Bowman for a segment that introduced the saucer to a national audience. Colbert's visit was played for laughs -- the contrast between the deadpan correspondent and the earnest Pendarvis made for memorable television -- but it also brought real attention and real visitors. In 2003, Pendarvis expanded, adding a smaller saucer roughly 20 feet in diameter on top of the original structure. He began living in the upper saucer during summer months, when it was cooler than his nearby mobile home. The teal packing foam he used for ceiling panels created an effect he described as artificial sky. By 2016, admission had risen from a dollar to $20. In May 2018, Pendarvis went bigger still, renting a billboard on nearby Interstate 26 to advertise the center to passing motorists.

On the morning of May 9, 2024, the UFO Welcome Center burned to the ground. The fire broke out around 9 a.m., and the combination of wood, fiberglass, and plastic that had given the saucer its shape also made it burn fast and hot. The cause was never officially determined. Pendarvis, with the same deadpan conviction he had brought to every interview over three decades, offered his own theory: "Maybe another UFO came by and set the fire." The loss was total. Three decades of construction, improvisation, and stubborn belief reduced to ash and twisted salvage in a matter of hours. The reaction from the broader roadside-attraction community was genuine mourning. The UFO Welcome Center was gone, and with it one of the last great expressions of a peculiarly American folk-art tradition: the backyard monument built not for profit or fame, but because one person believed something deeply enough to make it real.

What made the UFO Welcome Center remarkable was not its construction -- which was, by any objective standard, haphazard -- but the absolute sincerity of its creator. Pendarvis never treated the project as a joke or a stunt. He genuinely believed that extraterrestrial visitors might arrive in Bowman, South Carolina, and he wanted them to feel welcome. He gave tours with enthusiasm, explaining the saucer's features to anyone who stopped by. He appeared in Vice documentaries, on Atlas Obscura, in the Post and Courier, and on Roadside America, always with the same message: the aliens are coming, and someone should be ready. Bowman, for its part, had a complicated relationship with the center. Not everyone in town appreciated having a 46-foot plywood saucer as their most famous landmark. But for thousands of road-trippers, curiosity seekers, and lovers of American eccentricity, the UFO Welcome Center was a destination -- proof that the back roads of South Carolina still held genuine surprises.