flying saucer crash in 1947 and the "Roswell Incident," Roswell began as a humble trading post in the late 1860s along the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail and eventually grew into a metropolis of southeastern New Mexico. Once a cow town and home to famous Western figures such as John Chisum, Pat Garrett, and Capt. Joseph C. Lea, Roswell is also the birthplace of the New Mexico Military Institute, the testing grounds for Robert H. Goddard's rockets in the 1930s, and the site of the Roswell Army Airfield and a German POW camp in the 1940s. Today Roswell is a popular tourist destination and home to more than 50,000 residents.