In this case the rumor was accurate, although it wasn't the first time Atari had destroyed cartridges, nor was E.T. the only game dumped in New Mexico. (Rumor had it that Atari's Borregas Street warehouse sat atop crushed and buried game cartridges as well.) Some other video game manufacturers attempted to rid themselves of excess inventory by selling it at sharply reduced prices, but Atari, stuck with millions of games and consoles that were largely unsellable at any price, sent fourteen truckloads of merchandise from their plant in El Paso, Texas, to be dumped in a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico in late September 1983. In order to keep the site from being looted, steamrollers crushed and flattened the games, and a concrete slab was poured over the remains.
