Meteor Crater - II

This crater is one of, if not the largest intact craters in the world. This fact is what attracted the attention of geologists and engineers.

In November 1891, Grove Karl Gilbert, chief geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, investigated the crater and concluded that it was the result of a volcanic steam explosion.^[31] Gilbert had assumed that if it were an impact crater, then the volume of the crater, as well as meteoritic material, should exist in the rim. Gilbert also assumed a large portion of the meteorite should be buried in the crater and that this would generate a large magnetic anomaly. Gilbert's calculations showed that the volume of the crater and the debris on the rim were roughly equivalent, so that the mass of the hypothetical impactor was missing, nor were there any magnetic anomalies; he argued that the meteorite fragments found on the rim were coincidental. Gilbert publicized his conclusions in a series of lectures.^[32] In 1892, however, Gilbert would be among the first to propose that the Moon's craters were caused by impact rather than volcanism.^[33](wikipedia)

In 1903, mining engineer and businessman Daniel M. Barringer suggested that the crater had been produced by the impact of a large iron-metallic meteorite. Barringer's company, the Standard Iron Company, staked a mining claim to the land and received a land patent signed by Theodore Roosevelt for 640 acres (1 sq mi, 260 ha) around the center of the crater in 1903.^[34][35][28] The claim was divided into four quadrants coming from the center clockwise from north-west named Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In 1906, Roosevelt authorized the establishment of a newly named Meteor, Arizona, post office (the closest post office before was 30 mi (48 km) away in Winslow, Arizona).^[36] This new post office was located at Sunshine, a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, 6 mi north of the crater.^[37]

Nowadays, there is a large visitor center filled with displays and descriptions. There are also lots of ways to separate you from your money there as well.

One of the more striking things about this place is not the crater. It is how far this spot is from anything else. Not much has changed in that regard since it was formed.

The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch, when the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper.^[15][16] The area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by mammoths and giant ground sloths.^[17][18]

There just isn't much in the art of Arizona.