Meteor Crater in Arizona
I am confident that after a year of reading "Hints on Health" you have achieved or are on your way to a fit you. As my two main passions are staying in shape and traveling and last year I wrote health topics, this year the column articles will take you along with my husband, Mark, and me as we visit Our Nation’s Treasures.
When you read “Nation’s Treasures,” you likely think of National Parks, like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Acadia, and I’ll take you there, but some of our nation’s treasures are on private lands or are managed by individual states. We’ll stop to see what’s offered in these places too.
A picture will accompany each article, and if you want to see more, simply visit my blog, http://www.ournationstreasures.blogspot.com/. On the blog I will post each article that appears in the paper along with several pictures of the highlighted treasure.
Our first stop this year is Meteorite Crater off I-40 in Arizona, between Winslow and Flagstaff. A kitschy gift shop and an RV park mark the exit, the only development for miles in both directions on the highway. The crater is just south of the interstate at the end of a straight road through desert.
At the crater, Mark shells out the $12 per person fee for us to enter, and we roam the museum a couple minutes while we wait to catch the 9 a.m. show about the history and discovery of the crater.
We learn that in the late 1800s a fellow working for the government determined the crater to be the result of volcanic activity. However, the crater showed no evidence of volcanic ash or rocks so in 1902 a man named Daniel Barringer devised a theory: the crater was the result of a meteor colliding with the earth. And this time there was proof.
In fact, on display in the museum and open for touching, is, at 2 feet in diameter and 1400 pounds, the largest of the three main pieces of the meteorite that created the crater. The other two pieces of the 150-feet-in-diameter meteorite are in museums in Chicago and New York. This meteorite, and all meteorites, is mostly iron, a scant 7 percent nickel with trace amounts of “other.”
We learned that a heavenly body of this type that hits the earth is called a meteorite. While it’s still up in space, it’s called a meteoroid and once it hits our atmosphere, we call it a meteor. We learned that asteroids are minor planets, and comets are masses of gases.
After the film, Mark and I and eight others accompany a ranger out for a one-mile rim walk. The crater is so big: 4000 feet (three quarters mile) across and 550 feet deep. I find it interesting that the crater used to be 700 feet deep. How did it lose 150 feet? Wind erosion.
In the 1950s astronauts trained in the crater for their eventual moon landing. In 1964 a Cessna crashed into the side. The two pilots within, simply curious to see the crater, both were injured but not fatally.
After the rim walk, Mark and I finish our tour of the museum and walk out to the observation deck and look through scopes trained on tunnel openings, the astronaut model planting the American flag at the floor of the crater and the wreckage of the Cessna .
Daniel Barringer, the first to come up with the meteorite theory, worked at the site for 27 years so gained rights to the land. It’s still in the family.
When you read “Nation’s Treasures,” you likely think of National Parks, like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Acadia, and I’ll take you there, but some of our nation’s treasures are on private lands or are managed by individual states. We’ll stop to see what’s offered in these places too.
A picture will accompany each article, and if you want to see more, simply visit my blog, http://www.ournationstreasures.blogspot.com/. On the blog I will post each article that appears in the paper along with several pictures of the highlighted treasure.
Our first stop this year is Meteorite Crater off I-40 in Arizona, between Winslow and Flagstaff. A kitschy gift shop and an RV park mark the exit, the only development for miles in both directions on the highway. The crater is just south of the interstate at the end of a straight road through desert.
At the crater, Mark shells out the $12 per person fee for us to enter, and we roam the museum a couple minutes while we wait to catch the 9 a.m. show about the history and discovery of the crater.
We learn that in the late 1800s a fellow working for the government determined the crater to be the result of volcanic activity. However, the crater showed no evidence of volcanic ash or rocks so in 1902 a man named Daniel Barringer devised a theory: the crater was the result of a meteor colliding with the earth. And this time there was proof.
In fact, on display in the museum and open for touching, is, at 2 feet in diameter and 1400 pounds, the largest of the three main pieces of the meteorite that created the crater. The other two pieces of the 150-feet-in-diameter meteorite are in museums in Chicago and New York. This meteorite, and all meteorites, is mostly iron, a scant 7 percent nickel with trace amounts of “other.”
We learned that a heavenly body of this type that hits the earth is called a meteorite. While it’s still up in space, it’s called a meteoroid and once it hits our atmosphere, we call it a meteor. We learned that asteroids are minor planets, and comets are masses of gases.
After the film, Mark and I and eight others accompany a ranger out for a one-mile rim walk. The crater is so big: 4000 feet (three quarters mile) across and 550 feet deep. I find it interesting that the crater used to be 700 feet deep. How did it lose 150 feet? Wind erosion.
In the 1950s astronauts trained in the crater for their eventual moon landing. In 1964 a Cessna crashed into the side. The two pilots within, simply curious to see the crater, both were injured but not fatally.
After the rim walk, Mark and I finish our tour of the museum and walk out to the observation deck and look through scopes trained on tunnel openings, the astronaut model planting the American flag at the floor of the crater and the wreckage of the Cessna .
Daniel Barringer, the first to come up with the meteorite theory, worked at the site for 27 years so gained rights to the land. It’s still in the family.
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer | 6:28 PM
4 Comments:
I must say I really enjoyed your post and the picture.I've never been out west so that was very interesting.There is so many things to see in the U.S.I've camped all over Mich U.P. for over
15 yrs and still have not seen it all.
I'm glad you liked it. Keep checking back for more of our travels across the U.S.
I didn't mention that the posts here are articles from a newspaper column I write. Every other week will feature a different locale.
Somehow my name has been mixed up
with something else.SORRY
Thank you for such an enjoyable review!!! My elderly mother and I will be visiting Las Vegas and then driving to the Grand Canyon next week and are planning a detour to check out the Meteor Crater (her idea). After your review, I am sure I will enjoy it as much as the two of you! I am also looking forward to reading your other blogs - I also love to travel and to stay fit! I could not be happier that I stumbled upon your blog of the meteor crater.
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