"Showing up at the gate(s)" just seems odd. I wouldn't think there's anything to see there.
"In 1995, the federal government expanded the exclusionary area around the base to include nearby mountains that had hitherto afforded the only decent overlook of the base, prohibiting access to 3,972 acres (16.07 km2) of land formerly administered by the Bureau of Land Management."
There isn't, it's just that "raid area 51" went viral and was basically a meme meetup. The point was to get photos of the fictional raid, which were mostly just people standing outside the fences.
Of course there’s nothing to see there. That’s why “completely normal, non-conspiratorial” people would never attend such an event.
To be clear, I’m in no way harping on non-normal people or even conspiratorial people. Just taking issue with the idea that this was a sufficiently unremarkable occurrence for the population who attended to be anything like a normal slice of the American population.
"In 1995, the federal government expanded the exclusionary area around the base to include nearby mountains that had hitherto afforded the only decent overlook of the base, prohibiting access to 3,972 acres (16.07 km2) of land formerly administered by the Bureau of Land Management."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51
(I remember reading about this in the newsletter I mentioned, at the time)