FEATURE – Some might say it’s just a big hole in the ground while others might consider it a tourist trap. There’s much more to it than these two easy labels upon first seeing it.
It’s been a mining operation and a training ground as well as the subject of a decades-long debate as to how it was formed.
Meteor Crater, located approximately 40 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, is one of the best-preserved meteor impact sites on earth. It lies in the middle of a desert devoid of much vegetation. The drive to reach it isn’t what one would call scenic, but the payoff when visitors get there is worth the drive, both in its scenery and in discovering its captivating history.
Impact
Fifty thousand years ago, a huge iron-nickel meteorite (or dense cluster of meteorites estimated to have been approximately 150 feet wide and weigh several hundred thousand tons) traveling at about 40,000 miles per hour (or 11 miles per second) collided with earth on the desert plain of what would become Northern Arizona.
“Prior to impact, less than a percent or so of the meteorite was lost due to atmospheric heating and ablation as it plummeted to Earth,” the Meteor Crater informational pamphlet explains. “During impact, however, it is believed that a small percentage was vaporized, whereas the majority was melted.”
The meteorite material that did not vaporize or melt either mixed with the fragmented rock that remained in the crater or ejected out of the crater.
“Moving at hyper-velocity speed, this impact generated immensely powerful shock waves in the meteorite, the rock and the surrounding atmosphere,” the pamphlet says. “In the air, shock waves swept across the level plain, devastating all in their path for a radius of several miles.”
In seconds, the meteorite created a bowl shaped cavity, a crater three-quarters of a mile wide and 700 feet deep, displacing over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone, which formed a continuous blanket of debris stretching a distance over a mile from the impact site. The impact heaved limestone blocks the size of small houses onto the rim. Additionally, it threw fragments of rock and iron-nickel (some as large as a few feet across) as far as several miles away. One of these fragments is on display in the lobby between the museum and theater entrances.
Today, the floor of the crater is 530 feet deep, approximately the height of the Washington Monument. The crater is over 4,000 feet across and 2.4 miles in circumference.
To give an indication of its size, 20 football games on 20 football fields could be played at the same time on Meteor Crater’s floor with approximately two million spectators watching from its rock slopes, both a museum plaque and the pamphlet note.
“For a meteorite only 150 feet across to blast a hole three quarters of a mile wide and sixty stories deep, its high velocity is clearly one of the major factors required to create a crater this large,” the pamphlet states.
Meteor Crater is a wonderful example of a geologic phenomenon called reverse stratigraphy. The impact that formed the crater was so immense that it blew rock out of the crater and flipped it upside down onto the crater rim, moving what was once the bottom layer, to the top and vice-versa, a plaque at the Meteor Crater museum notes.
Early impressions
The first written report about the crater came from a man named Franklin, who served as a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. At first, it was referred to as Franklin’s Hole, the pamphlet says. Later, local settlers named it Coon’s Butte (or Coon Mountain) and thought it was an extinct volcano, possibly part of the Hopi Buttes volcanic fields to the northeast.
“In 1886, iron-nickel meteorites were found by a sheepherder, but believing them to be silver, he did not report his findings until 1891,” the pamphlet says. “Eventually, such discoveries led to the suggestion, by some, that the crater had been formed by a giant meteorite.”
In the early 1890s, Grove K. Gilbert, the chief geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey briefly visited the crater. Earlier, Gilbert had concluded that meteorite impact had created most craters on the moon. However, he misinterpreted field evidence at Meteor Crater and concluded its origins were of a volcanic nature.
Barringer’s dream
In the early 20th century, Philadelphia mining engineer Daniel Moreau Baringer, became interested in the site, convinced that it was the product of the impact of a large iron meteorite, assuming that the main body of the meteorite was buried beneath the crater floor.
“Since the crater is roughly circular, it was natural at that time to assume that the body that formed it lay beneath its center,” the pamphlet remarks.
Barringer initially came to Arizona in 1896 to mine a rich silver deposit with two partners and met his wife, Margaret, in the state.
In 1903, he formed the Standard Iron Company and filed for four placer mining claims, obtaining the patents and ownership of the two square miles that included the crater.
Barringer’s company dug the first mining shaft where the low, white mounds of pulverized Coconino sandstone that is still visible on the crater floor today. They found a few meteoritic fragments in the shaft, but discovered the pulverized rock beneath the water table turned to quicksand and prevented mining to the depth where they suspected the main body of the meteorite to lie.
“After the initial exploration, Barringer conducted some simple experiments and discovered that a rifle bullet fired into thick mud, even at a low angle, generally produces a round hole,” the pamphlet explains. This observation led Barringer and his crew to believe that the meteorite could have penetrated at an angle and been buried off-center.
As visitors see today, the rock is noticeably uplifted on the south side of the crater, higher than anywhere else around the crater, approximately 250 feet above pre-impact levels. This observation led Barringer to conclude that the meteorite’s trajectory was at an angle and was buried beneath the crater’s south rim.
As such, they began drilling at the south crater wall to a depth of 1,250 feet, where they started seeing an increasing number of oxidized meteorite fragments.
“At times, hours passed with no progress in deepening the hole and the drill bit would gouge into something at least as hard as the drill bit itself,” the pamphlet explains. “Then at 1,376 feet, the rotary drill bit jammed completely. Barringer interpreted this to be caused by meteorite debris. The bit was permanently stuck, the drill cable broke, funds were exhausted, and the exploration was abandoned in 1929.”
For 26 years Barringer and his crew carried on in their mining efforts with not much to show for it – only a few small fragments. However, Barringer’s work help the theory that an impact event created the crater gain traction.
“Barringer lived just long enough to learn of calculations done by the astronomer Forest Ray Moulton which showed that such an energetic impact would have completely vaporized the incoming meteorite, and that his mining enterprise had been doomed to failure even before it began,” the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology website explains.
Barringer died heart attack in November 1929, soon after returning to Philadelphia from his failed mining attempts at Meteor Crater. One cannot help but speculate that perhaps the knowledge he wish he would have known 26 years earlier helped send him to his grave.
The Barringer family still owns the property. In 1941, the family started a lease with the Bar T Bar Ranch company, a cattle operation established in the 1880s and owns and leases the surrounding lands. In 1955, Bar T Bar Ranch formed a separate corporation, Meteor Crater Enterprises, Inc., and entered into a long term lease of the land with the Barringer family.
Science proves the impact
Barringer’s work at the crater started scientific acceptance that the crater was not volcanic, but the result of a meteorite impact.
In 1960, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, former Chief of the Branch of Astrogeology of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, proved that Meteor Crater was, indeed, the product of a giant impact event. Shoemaker and his wife, Carolyn, completed several studies that provided estimates of the rates and energies associated with comets and asteroids that could impact earth, concluding Meteor Crater was formed by an impact event and that such an event should occur approximately every 50,000 years.
Dr. Shoemaker and his team also discovered two important new minerals at Meteor Crater: coesite and stishovite.
“Both are high-pressure polymorphous forms of silica, or silicon dioxide, altered to very dense crystalline states by extremely high pressures equivalent to more than 20,000 times atmospheric pressure, or 300,000 pounds per square inch,” the pamphlet notes about these minerals. “Although coesite and stishovite can be produced in the laboratory, they had not before been identified in nature.”
Since this research at Meteor Crater, both minerals have been identified at other geological features called astroblemes.
Astronaut training and plane crash
Due to its similarity to craters on the lunar surface, from 1963 until late 1970, Meteor Crater served as a training ground for astronauts bound for the moon as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Apollo missions. Dr. Shoemaker, whose ambition was to become an astronaut but health problems prevented him, became one of the astronaut’s trainers. He and colleague Dr. David Roddy taught future astronauts how to make their way around a cratered environment and how to collect rocks ejected from a crater that would provide clues to the underground composition of the moon, an informational plaque in the visitor center courtyard explains.
Training at Meteor Crater also led to a safer space suit. One of the astronaut trainees ripped his suit on a rock in the crater, which, if it had occurred on the moon, would have released oxygen and led to his death. After the incident, NASA redesigned their space suits with a thicker material that would resist tears. More recently, NASA tested a space suit designed for missions to Mars at Meteor Crater, the plaque notes.
On August 8, 1964 American Airlines pilots John Kidd and Gary Chapin took off in a small Cessna 150 propeller-power plane from Wichita, Kansas on their way to Los Angeles. They refueled in nearby Winslow, Arizona, and when they reached Meteor Crater, they flew a little too low to get a good view of it. They dipped into the crater and could not maintain level flight. Kidd, who piloted the plane, tried to build up speed by circling the crater to climb over its rim, but during that attempt the aircraft stalled and crashed on the south side of the crater. The crash severely injured both pilots, but they survived. The crash broke Chapin’s back, but he was able to drag Kidd, who was unconscious, away from the plane, which was consumed by fire. After recovering, both occupants returned to piloting commercial aircraft.
Meteor Crater tour guides tell visitors the story of later pilots of small aircraft flying a little too low to get a view of the wreckage. To eliminate this distraction, much of the wreckage was removed, some of it being shoved down one of the obsolete mine shafts left by Barringer’s operation.
Meteor Crater today
Meteor Crater lies approximately 43 miles east of Flagstaff on I-40, just over a five hour drive southeast of St. George.
In addition to providing short trails to sweeping views of the crater itself, the Meteor Crater Visitor Center includes a museum, a theater that shows an informative video about the crater’s history, a 4D ride, a courtyard with an Apollo moon capsule and astronaut space suit on display as well as a gift shop.
Scientific research is still ongoing at Meteor Crater.
“Today, modern geological and geophysical exploration techniques have largely replaced the earlier method of just digging shafts and performing simple rotary drilling,” the pamphlet explains. “New approaches include the use of seismic, gravity, magnetic and electrical field techniques. Recently, cosmic ray spallation procedures were used to arrive at a more accurate age of Meteor Crater and 14 dating techniques have been used to address erosion and climatic issues. Advanced microscope, X-ray, and other laboratory procedures are in use to study the shocked rocks, meteoritic material, and their histories.”
As with any rock formation, natural erosion by wind, water and heat are ongoing at Meteor Crater, albeit very slowly. For example, the rim crest has only been lowered less than a few tens of feet since the impact. The rim still stands approximately 150 feet above the surrounding plain.
There are many larger terrestrial impact sites, but Meteor Crater is the first proven. It is also the Earth’s best preserved impact site, according to the pamphlet. It represents the most basic type of impact crater in the solar system. In 1968, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated Meteor Crater a Natural Landmark.
Meteor Crater Enterprises and the Barringer family operate the property as a public trust. Each year, both of them make substantial contributions to science and education through grants, scholarships and special awards.
For more information about Meteor Crater, please visit its website.
Photo Gallery
This portrait of Daniel Barringer, who unsuccessfully for large fragments of the meteorite that created Meteor Crater, appears on a plaque in the Meteor Crater Museum, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News This historic photo, on a plaque in the Meteor Crater Museum, shows Dr. Eugene Shoemaker in the 1960s instructing future astronauts on the surface of Meteor Crater, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News This historic photo, on a plaque in the museum, shows a future astronaut training on the floor of Meteor Crater during the 1960s, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News The largest fragment of the meteorite that created Meteor Crater is on display in the lobby between the visitor center's museum and theater, Oct. 20, 2020 | Photo by Chris Reed, St. George News A replica astronaut in a space suit stands in the courtyard at the Meteor Crater visitor center, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News An Apollo mission moon capsule sits on display in the Meteor Crater visitor center courtyard, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News Meteor Crater is more than just a large hole in the ground, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News Meteor Crater is more than just a large hole in the ground, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News Meteor Crater is more than just a large hole in the ground, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News Meteor Crater is more than just a large hole in the ground, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News A paved pathway leads visitors from the visitor center to a panoramic view of Meteor Crater, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News A paved pathway leads visitors from the visitor center to a panoramic view of Meteor Crater, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News An enlarged picture in the Meteor Crater Museum provides visitors a view of what the crater looks like at its surface since the floor of the crater is off limits to visitors, A paved pathway leads visitors from the visitor center to a panoramic view of Meteor Crater, June 1, 2022 | Photo by Reuben Wadsworth, St. George News
About the series “Days”
“Days” is a series of stories about people and places, industry and history in and surrounding the region of southwestern Utah.
“I write stories to help residents of southwestern Utah enjoy the region’s history as much as its scenery,” St. George News contributor Reuben Wadsworth said.
To keep up on Wadsworth’s adventures, “like” his author Facebook page or follow his Instagram account.
Wadsworth has also released a book compilation of many of the historical features written about Washington County as well as a second volume containing stories about other places in Southern Utah, Northern Arizona and Southern Nevada.