California's first mass UFO sighting - in Fresno

In 1896, California had it's first mass UFO sighting, and Fresno was part of it.  On the night of November 22, 1896 a massive "airship" was seen in San Francisco, San Jose, & Fresno. 

Hundreds of witnesses described the craft as some sort of airship, moving slowly through the night sky.  Some of the witnesses said they even saw figures through the windows of the craft.  Accounts became wilder as the month passed. A Colonel Shaw of Stockton claimed to have encountered inhuman beings with the airship on a country road. A man in Indio claimed to have gone aboard the craft for a flight.  

No one knows what the craft was.  Balloon flight was still in it's infancy and Germany wouldn't have the zeppelin until around 1899.  Could this have been some sort of secret government project, mirroring the ones of today?  Perhaps it was some sort of private aircraft, but this seems doubtful as if the government didn't have this sort of technology, then a private group or individual couldn't have been behind this.  Maybe, just maybe, this was some sort of E.T. encounter.  Fifty years before the Kenneth Arnold sighting up in Washington in 1947 that started the modern UFO craze.