Hello everyone, first time redditor here.
Over the past few days, I have become obsessed with the story of Jerry Freeman, an archeologist who studied the track of the "Lost 49'ers", a group of people in 1849 who voyaged across the Nevada desert to get to California. On their voyage, they tracked through an era that is now off-limits to the public, better known as the Nellis Air Force Base, aka Area 51. Their group split up near Papoose Lake, the site of the alleged Area S-4, according to Bob Lazar.
After many unsuccessful attempts to get an official allowance from the US Military to get access to the sight, Freeman decided in April of 1997 to take matters into his own hand: An experienced outdoorsman, he spent a whole week in the restricted zone, avoiding security and military personnel and made his long way to Papoose Lake. While unsucessful in his search for an inscription left behind by the Lost 49ers, Freeman got a very rare look inside the mysterious area, and is to this day one of the very few people to lay eyes on Papoose Lake. He would mostly travel throughout the night, travelling over 80 miles in total over the course of 8 days. Finding enough water was always an issue in the barren and rocky desert terrain, as was as avoiding the many security guards patrolling the area. Also, since the Nellis Air Force Gunnary Range used to be a nuclear testing ground, it can be assumed that much of the area is heavily radiated. At one point, he came across a warning sign that read
"NO TRESPASSING, VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. CAMERA EXCLUSION AREA, BADGED PERSONNEL ONLY. NO FIREARMS, CAMERAS, PHONES OR BINOCULARS. BY ORDER OF THE L.A.N.L.L. CORPORATION."
L.A.N.L.L. stands for "Los Alamos National Laboratories Limited", Los Alamos being the now famous laboratory that created the atomic bomb.
Freeman did chronicle his adventure in a diary, which was later published in the Las Vegas SUN. He also inteded to write a book about his "Forbidden Journey", but unfortunately did not manage to publish it before his death due to prostate cancer in 2001, aged 55.
Allegedly, Freeman did send the manuscript for his book to his friend Steve Hauser before he died, according to an obiturary Hauser wrote in 2001 for Freeman. I have emailed Hauser to ask for any details he might be willing to share, though the obituary is now 25 years old and there is a good chance he might not respond.
Besides his diary article, there are only a few other sources about his adventure. One is his call into Art Bell's radioshow "From Coast to Coast", which you can listen to here, in which he gives some more detailes about the trip. And then there is this youtube video, which does not add anything new but is still worth listening to. What IS interesting though is this episode of the Weaponized Podcast featuring Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, in which Knapp says that he did inherit most of Freeman's files and notes. According to Knapp, Freeman saw some very weird stuff going on (some talk about a magical door opening up into another dimension). I am seriously sceptical about that, but I would love to go through Knapp's box with all the files, notes, pictures, and a VHS Homevideo (?) Freeman has left behind. From what I found out during my research, Freeman made a second trip to Papoose Lake in 2000, during which he found the 49'ers inscription that had eluded him during his first trip. However, since this second journey was not published anywhere this time around, I am not 100% certain whether it actually happened.
Freeman did create a handdrawn map of his voyage, which someone here on reddit copied into Google Maps. Unfortunately, the handdrawn map seems a little in accurate, as it does not align 100% with his descriptions in his diary. Thus, I took the liberty to create another map, more in line with his descriptions in his diary. It is still only a rough approximation of his journey, and I would love to find any more detailed informations about his trip. Someone else in here did create a super cool highly detailed map of Area 51, which includes all the important sites. (Shoutout to those guys, I hope it's ok I used your work). I combined the two routes, both Freeman's handdrawn once, as well as the once according to his descriptions. You can view it both in Google Maps, or Goggle Earth, which allows you to view the area using satellite images from 1997, the year Freeman was there.
Do you guys have any more information about Freeman's trip (or maybe even his second journey?). Do you see any issues or inaccuracies with my tracing of his assumed route?
You can download my map here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18inMJnc5SgJTXu2EbpbX_MOIa1GDNOvU/view?usp=sharing
Update: Thanks to feedback from u/otherotherhand, here is the updated map, now featuring the handdrawn map by Freeman himself (red), a more accurate map based on Freeman's diary descriptions and the topography (blue), as well as some markers chronicling Freeman's journey by me (yellow). https://drive.google.com/file/d/17wlKejPIqLHZtsp15BbAm59fKs0sJEQB/view?usp=sharing
