Barringer’s Boondoggle

 

    Leaving Tusayan, just south of the Grand Canyon, we hit the road around 7 a.m. for the second installment of America’s Biggest Holes in the Ground tour. We’re headed for Meteor Crater Arizona to check out what happens when a 300,000-ton iron meteor slams into Earth at 30,000 miles per hour. We’re disappointed that on this trip we can’t make the big pit tour a trifecta by visiting Carlsbad Caverns, so just two wicked-big holes will have to do.

    Although it is a national natural landmark, Meteor Crater remains in private hands so it isn’t a national park or monument. It’s located about 37 miles east of Flagstaff and just six miles off Interstate 40.

    Turning off the highway there’s little to suggest one of the best-preserved impact craters on the planet is nearby. It’s wide open, shrubby desert, punctuated by a few spindly barbed-wire fences and cattle guards on the paved road. It’s not long before we see a sign warning “Four Miles to Impact.”

Photo by Mary Lauzau

    A couple miles off, we can see the raised ring of the impact site on the horizon. Because of the remote location, and the fact it’s private property surrounded by a metal fence, there’s no way to see into the crater without going through the visitor center and museum. The admission isn’t cheap but the complex is first rate, looking more like a modern college campus than a roadside attraction.

    Inside a museum features displays on meteors, asteroids and other cosmic impacts such as the Tunguska Event which involved a 12-Megaton airburst that flattened 80 million trees in Siberia in 1908. The 93-mile crater created by the Chicxulub impact in the Yucatan that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is also explained. That blast equaled an astounding 100 million megatons.

    After exploring the museum and taking a “4D” (is there such a thing?) simulated space flight where we save earth from an extinction-level meteor in the future, we proceed outside and climb a long series of stairs to an observation platform.

    Looking at the massive void in the ground there’s no question you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near this part of the world when the impact actually happened some 50,000 years ago.

    Just a few days ago we visited the Trinity site where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated. It equaled some 25 thousand tons of TNT. The force of the explosion at Meteor Crater was equal to 10 million tons of TNT. It displaced 175 million metric tons of dirt and rock and created a hole nearly 4,000 feet across, and 650 feet deep. The surrounding rock was pushed up in a ring nearly 200 feet high. Layers of sedimentary rock flipped 180 degrees and folded back on themselves. Those driving by on I40 would have been incinerated by the radiant energy of the sun and blasted to their final destination by a 600-miles per hour shock wave.

    Every living thing up to six miles away would have been killed and destruction would have extended as far as ten miles out. Dirt, dust, debris, and vaporized pieces of the meteorite itself would have rained down for miles around.

    For years, scientists debated whether the crater was created by volcanic action or a cosmic catastrophe. Engineer Daniel Barringer, who believed heaven, not earth was to blame, staked a mining claim and lost a fortune digging in vain in the hopes of uncovering an enormous trove of interplanetary iron.

The Holsinger Meteorite.

    Scientists who later confirmed the meteor hypothesis now believe most of that iron was vaporized on impact. The 1,400-pound Holsinger meteorite is displayed in the lobby. It is believed to be the largest chunk of the impactor ever found.

    Barringer’s plan to get rich mining interstellar iron went bust but the real mother lode for his family turned out to be tourists paying to see the crater itself. It now draws up to 300,000 people annually bringing in an astronomical amount of revenue.

    But Meteor Crater is no tourist trap. Funds raised there also help pay for continued research. Every Apollo astronaut who walked on the moon actually trained in the bottom of the crater.

    Staring out over the crater we spot some rusty equipment and abandoned buildings in the bottom, just specs at this distance; the last remains of Barringer’s boondoggle. Shattered dreams lay surrounded by the shattered crust of the planet. One testifies to the impetuousness of man. The other to unfathomable power. Meteors soar across the heavens. Meteorites are what remains when they reach the ground. In the heat shimmering off the rim of the crater, conjecture becomes fact. Time marches on.

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