Find A Falling Star
Find A Falling Star
Find A Falling Star
Also by HARVEY H. N I N I N G E R
PA UL S. ERIKSSON, INC.
New York
© 1972 by H. H. Nininger. All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without permission of the Publisher,
Paul S. Eriksson, Inc., 119 West 57th St., New York, N. Y. 10019.
Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by George J.
McLeod Ltd., Ontario.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-83710.
ISBN 0 - 8 3 9 7 - 2 2 2 9 - X . Designed by Arouni.
Manufactured in the United States of America
lo the hundreds of school officials who, seeing the educational value of our pro-
gram, gave encouragement to the new science of meteoritics.
To the farmers, ranchmen, and others who live close to the land and were willing
to broaden the quest beyond measure.
To my long-suffering family for the support of their love, for their loyalty and
their enthusiasm for the search that continues.
To my friends—hundreds of them—who have shared the talking and the seek-
ing; and to a particular friend, Herbert G. Fales, who would not allow me to
abandon this book.
And last but not least, to Mr. George Boyd, Coordinator of Research at Arizona
State University, who grasped the full significance of our program and would not
rest until he saw the fruits of our labors safely installed in that university.
PREFACE
Everyone agrees that it is important that man understand something of the
history of the earth and of the universe, particularly the Solar System. This
book, and indeed the author's whole life, reflects in a small and modest
way an attempt to help with that understanding.
It seems high time that man cease propagating the myth that the earth
was created one afternoon about 6,000 years ago and that he gear his
thinking to a recognition of the fact that he lives in the midst of a process
the individual incidents of which are so widely separated in time and space
that no one ever sees enough of it to adequately describe it; but by careful
evaluation of recorded incidents he may build a reliable concept of Na-
ture, including himself, and his race, basking in the radiance of increasing
knowledge and of the ingenuity behind the whole performance.
It is in this spirit that the investigations of the author and his wife, Addie,
have been carried on for more than a half-century.
Although we were not able to get the necessary financial support from
educational or research institutions for more than the equivalent of a few
months of field work during our thirty most active years, I cannot refrain
from expressing our gratitude for the moral support that came from many
quarters. Letters and invitations to lecture in hundreds of colleges, univer-
sities, high schools, museums, etc. all provided an outlet for our message.
Writers, who found in our program an exciting and rewarding prospect
for the farming population, ranchers, hunters, fishermen and nature lov-
ers. Hundreds of lucky finds kept the program alive.
Scientists who were especially helpful by way of encouragement were:
Dr. Oliver C. Farrington, Head, Department of Geology, Field Museum;
J. D. Figgins, Director, Colorado Museum of Natural History; Dr. Clyde
Fisher, Curator of Meteorites, American Museum of Natural History;
Prof. Curvin H. Gingrich, Professor of Astronomy, Carleton College; Dr.
Frederick C. Leonard, Professor of Astronomy, UCLA; Dr. Forest R.
Moulton, Permanent Secretary, A.A.A.S.; Prof. F. K. G. Mullerreid, Uni-
viii PREFACE
H. H. Nininger
Sedona, Arizona
July, 1972
•
INTRODUCTION
H. H. Nininger and Meteorites go together, like word pairs such as bread and
butter, at least for those who study these rare samples of cosmic debris.
Meteorites were, indeed, bread and butter for the Nininger family, the first
ever to survive by finding, collecting, trading, selling, and exhibiting
meteorites. This book is a fascinating autobiographical account that clearly
delineates the single-minded purposeful persistence of a man who refused
to be diverted by seemingly overwhelming obstacles from pursuing an
almost impossible dream. Nininger's early prophetic vision of meteorites
as scientific Rosetta Stones has grown to reality in his later years, a devel-
opment that he substantially furthered by his missionary effort.
I am delighted that Nininger's experiences are now preserved in this
volume.
As one among the few with a personal active scientific interest in shoot-
ing stars or meteors for some four decades, I have been amazed that he
could indeed survive while persisting in his unique profession. His secret,
of course, is exposed in these pages—a rare ability to communicate his
knowledge and his enthusiasm, with an engaging rustic simplicity of ap-
proach. Applying this talent in the field, Nininger gains both the interest
and the confidence of rural untrained people. If approached in a sophis-
ticated or patronizing manner, they would become aloof. Furthermore, his
basic honesty and integrity in his field activities stand out in his account,
coupled, I must admit, with the shrewdness of a Yankee horse trader.
To illustrate his practical realism in the field, I recall his cooperation
with me in a Harvard project at the White Sands Proving Grounds in N e w
Mexico, December 1946. We were to photograph the first artificial mete-
ors to be made by shaped charges in grenades exploded from a V-2 missile
at high altitude. In his spare time while we were waiting, Nininger dug
a "fox hole" as a personal safety precaution in case the unguided V-2
should land near our site, by no means an impossibility.
Nininger expresses his frustration at the lack of scientific interest in
X INTRODUCTION
meteoritics before the middle of this century. I, too, shared that frustra-
tion, but in fact we both have profited by that lack of interest. It permitted
us to work alone at our own pace in virgin scientific ground without much
competition. Nininger wisely fails to recount some unhappy incidents
where too vigorous competition actually thwarted him from receiving the
just rewards of his efforts. Today, it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to see
the tide turn as numerous young enthusiasts push forward the meteoritical
research that we have long felt to be of vital importance.
It is not, however, just the search for solutions to practical problems
of ballistics, missiles, satellites, and space probes—generated by the
space age—that has produced the current impetus in meteoritical re-
search; nor is it the availability of Moon samples. Advances in physics
and chemistry have produced research techniques and methods of anal-
ysis so sophisticated and so subtle as to be almost miraculous when
compared with the tools of research available early in this century. To-
day, the meteoriticist can analyze a sample the size of a pinhead to de-
termine its composition and mineral content, its age since it was
formed, since it cooled, and since it broke away from a larger parent
body in space, its temperature and pressure at formation, and other
details of its life history and, indeed, of the history of the solar system.
Thus, meteorites are truly far more precious than diamonds, because
they carry cryptic messages of happenings somewhere in the solar sys-
tem more than four billion years ago. Oddly enough, we still cannot
identify the parent body from which any meteorite was broken off.
Presumably, meteorites come from asteroids by collision, and certainly
they are of solar system origin. But where? To answer even this sim-
ple question, we may have to send space probes to asteroids and possi-
bly even to old comet nuclei. As we seek these answers, Nininger's
life work will serve as an increasingly important foundation. He has
directed our attention both to the importance of meteorites and to the
means of finding them. Now let us carry on from this accelerated start.
Thus, we all owe a debt of gratitude to H. H. Nininger for his successful
educational program, both to the layman and to the professional, and for
his material contribution of so many actual meteorites. In addition, we
must thank him for telling us in such a vivid fashion the story of his life's
work.
The life vividly exemplifies what he urged of his students, " D o some-
thing that needs doing."
My wife, Addie, and I have studied meteorites for many years, and
among the many reports of possible meteorites that came to us from time
to time there were some that, because of distances involved, we could not
afford to look into immediately. We would answer the letters or make
notes of oral reports, then file them away until several could be investi-
gated on a single trip. O n e such report lay in our files for years. It was a
message from George E. Dawson, writing from Phoenix, Arizona, that he
had a 135-pound Canyon Diablo meteorite that he wished to sell.
Meteorites are usually named after the place where they are found, in
this case Canyon Diablo, the site of an enormous meteoritic crater in
Arizona. There are two basic kinds of meteorites; those mostly composed
of an alloy of nickel and iron are called iron meteorites, or irons, for short;
those primarily of stone are called stony meteorites, or simply, stones. For
many years my wife and I supported our scientific research by collecting,
classifying and selling meteorites to other scientists and to scientific institu-
tions throughout the world.
Canyon Diablos—the iron meteorites found at the Arizona Crater—
were the most plentiful iron meteorites on the market and we needed no
more at that time, there being little demand for them during the thirties.
I simply wrote to Dawson that I would stop to see his specimen when I
was in the area.
It was a number of years before I hunted him up when passing through
Phoenix. Yes, he still had the meteorite, still would like to sell it, but it
was not in his possession at the moment. Query followed query about my
connections and my reliability before finally I was told that I might exam-
ine the meteorite. Eventually the reason for Dawson's reluctance became
evident. He had learned of the Arizona law which forbids digging into
ruins—and this iron had been found in an old Indian grave. When I
pointed out that the law had been adopted some seven years after he made
his discovery, and that he had committed no wrong under it, Dawson led
me to the rear of a curio store in downtown Phoenix where, hidden under
some unimportant old relics, was the large iron meteorite he had been
calling "Canyon Diablo" to escape any possible trouble with the law.
He drove me to an ancient ruin on a mesa top a few miles east of Camp
Verde where in 1915 he had come upon a stone cyst—a little pocket in
THE PA TH BEHIND 9
the earth walled and covered over with flat rocks—in the corner of a
decayed dwelling. The little cubicle appeared to be a typical child burial
cyst, but instead of a mummy, pride and joy of all pot-hunters, it had
disappointed him by giving up, respectfully wrapped in feather cloth, a
135-pound metallic meteorite.
Thus did one of the first positive evidences of the American Indian's
regard for things from heaven come to light.
Pottery associated with the burial showed an age of 800 or 900 years.
Removal and study of the structure of a small sample of the iron indicated
Dawson was very probably right in attributing his feather-wrapped mete-
orite to Canyon Diablo. Except for this small section, the meteorite re-
mains intact, priceless because of its history as an object cherished by an
ancient tribe of the human race. We gave it the name Camp Verde, for the
locality of the grave in which it was found.
Only seventy miles north of the spot where Dawson found his iron
meteorite in its Indian grave, Mr. A. J. Townsend opened another such
child burial cyst to find not a mummy, but a pile of green-stained rocks
which he judged to be copper ore. A University of Arizona scientist,
however, identified the fragments as remains of a disintegrated meteorite
which evidently had been seen to come from the sky and therefore was
extended the respect of an honorable burial.
The little Pojoaque pallasite (stony-iron meteorite) was found in a
pottery jar in an Indian burial ground in Santa Fe County, New Mexico
in 1931. It bore evidence of having been carried in a medicine pouch, its
surface indicating it had been subject to much wear against soft materials.
In 1950, while attending a mineral exhibit at Bozeman, Montana, we
secured a meteorite from C. F. Miller that he had dug from an Indian
grave in 1936.
Persistent field work accumulated further evidence that ancient Ameri-
cans collected meteorites. The Horse Creek iron meteorite and the
Springfield stone meteorite were both found in 1937 on Indian campsites
in southeastern Colorado. The Elkhart stone (1936) was found on a
campsite in southwest Kansas. The Alamosa (1937), Lost Lake (1934) and
Newsom (1939) stones all were found by hunters of Indian artifacts in the
eastern edge of the San Luis Valley of Colorado; Cotesfield (1928) and
Briscoe County (1940) were found on campsites in Nebraska and Texas
respectively. Muroc and Muroc Dry Lake of California (1936) were found
in an area where Indian artifacts had been found. And the great Navajo
iron of Apache County, Arizona, when found in 1922 had been covered
with boulders, and bore several grooves that appeared to have been cut
by stone implements.
Many other examples show ancient man's regard for meteorites. Certain
tribes made regular pilgrimages to the meteorites of Red River, Texas;
Willamette, Oregon, and Iron Creek, Canada. The Chilcoot meteorite was
10 FIND A FALLING STAR
kept in the custody of an Alaskan chief. The Wichita iron of Texas likewise
was held in high regard.
Meteorites were found associated with mounds of prehistoric Indians of
the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. The Iron Creek meteorite was revered
by Cree and Blackfeet Indians as the "Manitou Stone" where it lay on a
hilltop in the province of Alberta, Canada. The great Casas Grandes iron,
3,407 pounds, was found buried, wrapped like a mummy, in ruins of the
Montezuma Indians in Chihuahua, Mexico. The three great irons brought
by Admiral Peary to New York from Greenland were objects of rever-
ence among the aborigines of the island.
If the ancients had not seen these particular meteorites fall, they had
seen others and had concluded correctly that these were of similar origin,
passing the story down through generations.
This reverential treatment by Indian tribes of North America was in the
same pattern of awe shown by other early peoples in many scattered places
of the earth.
In India meteorites fell at Durala in 1815, Nedagolla, 1870, and Sabet-
mahet, 1885, and they were all worshiped to some extent, and the fall of
Saonlod in 1877 was so feared that the natives pounded all the stones to
powder.
The great reluctance to believe a fact of science was reserved for scien-
tists, even for the first half of the nineteenth century in Puritan America.
•
Apply your mind to at least one problem
which has never been solved, which in
general is considered impossible of solution,
but which, being solved, would help
humanity. Do with your life something
that has never been done, but which you
feel needs doing.
2. THE CHALLENGE
In the early twenties I was teaching at McPherson College, McPherson,
Kansas, where my wife and I were settled into the academic and commu-
nity routine of small college faculty life. My specialty was biology, but I
was also teaching a field course in geology. I enjoyed my work. Any
problem that demanded critical observation intrigued me. I thought of
myself as a naturalist in the older and true sense of the word—one who
critically observes and describes facts of nature.
About the middle of August, 1923, in the Scientific Monthly, I found an
article by Professor A. M. Miller of the University of Kentucky. The
subject was meteorites. I cannot remember ever reading anything that so
completely captivated me.
All during my childhood meteors were regarded in about the same light
as ghosts and dragons: mentioned rarely and never discussed seriously.
During my Oklahoma and Kansas student days I associated with field and
laboratory scientists, yet I am sure I never heard the subject of meteorites
mentioned more than once. On that occasion it simply was dismissed as
"irrelevant." The word "meteorite" was scarcely a part of my vocabulary
when I graduated from college and was almost equally unfamiliar after
years of graduate study and teaching.
Dr. Miller's article indicated there was a body of knowledge of which
previously I had read nothing except a few scattered paragraphs in the
public press. It was a source of actual embarrassment to me for some days,
for I had been in the habit of thinking that I was possessed of a pretty fair
education.
Only a few months before, while attending a meeting of ornithologists
in Chicago, I had walked with a noted scientist from a Philadelphia mu-
seum through the mineralogical hall of the famous Field Museum. We
came upon the great meteorite exhibit and paused before a case of beauti-
ful specimens.
12 FIND A FALLING STAR
My friend broke our silence "I wonder if they really know that these
things come to the earth from space," he remarked seriously.
He had spoken my own thoughts. As I was to learn through succeeding
years, he had spoken the thoughts of many scientists, including not a few
geologists.
I reviewed Dr. Miller's article for our Faculty Science Club. Subse-
quently I spent many hours pondering the phenomena of meteorite falls
and their uniqueness. It seemed to me that by any fair appraisal the arrival
of a meteorite from space must be one of the most basic and fundamental
of natural events. Here was a source of information concerning the uni-
verse beyond our atmosphere of a kind that astronomers were making no
special effort to utilize. Here was a more or less contribution to our planet
from outside space which geologists seemed to be making no effort to
evaluate except as accidental recoveries were thrown into their laps.
What would I not give for the opportunity to witness the fall of a
meteorite to earth! According to Dr. Miller's estimate, my chances were
very slim, perhaps one in a million. Nevertheless I could not resist consid-
ering the steps one might take to determine the course and the approxi-
mate place of landing, and how one might go about obtaining community
assistance for a search. Professor Miller had supplied no blueprint for such
an undertaking.
Unknown to me of course, in August while I was first reading Dr.
Miller's article, there was out in space a meteorite traveling in an orbit
which crossed that of our planet at a point some millions of miles ahead
of us; and the meteorite's speed and timing was such that we would reach
that crossing at the same time. Most important for me was the fact that the
side of our planet on which I lived would be turned toward the stranger
at precisely the right moment to receive it. Of our hundred-million-
square-mile hemisphere, only that half-million-square-mile area within
which McPherson College was located would be permitted to experience
the light display which would mark the end of the meteorite's flight.
On the evening of November 9, 1923, faculty and students gathered
in the chapel for a lecture, play, chorus or some other of the programs
common to college communities. At the close of the program I walked
toward home with my friend Professor E. L. Craik. We paused in front
of his house to chat. Astronomy didn't enter our conversation. Had any-
one asked, I could have told that we were sailing along in our orbit at
about eighteen-and-a-half miles per second, that our town and college
along with all the rest of the earth's surface were in normal rotation about
its axis at a little less than a thousand miles an hour. But I surely could not
have told that a meteorite only a few thousand miles away was following
a course that within minutes would mean the extinction of this minor
member of the solar family before our very eyes and at the same time
would start a metamorphosis in the life of a young biologist.
THE CHALLENGE 13
Suddenly a blazing stream of fire pierced the sky, lighting the landscape
as though Nature had pressed a giant electric switch. The blade of light
vanished with equal suddenness, leaving a darkness seeming thicker than
before.
Momentarily Professor Craik was speechless. Then he saw that I was
bent over, making a mark on the sidewalk. He asked me what I was doing.
I remember telling him I was going to find that meteorite and that I was
plotting its path from where I saw it. He laughed, but I was serious. I will
never forget the conversation that followed.
" D o you really think that something has actually come to earth?" he
asked.
I was certain of it.
"Well, where do you think it landed?"
"Probably within 150 miles," I estimated.
He laughed again. " N o w I know you must be kidding."
" N o , I'm serious, and I'm going to hunt for it."
"Has such a thing ever been done?"
It was the question that has followed me all of my life, thrown at me
whenever I have proposed something new.
Professor Craik and I didn't talk long that night. I wanted to dispatch
a message to the principal newspapers of our state. I asked the editors to
publish a request to all who had seen the great meteor that had passed
toward the southwest at 8:57 P . M . Central Standard Time to please furnish
to me the following information:
1) The location from which the observation was made.
2) The exact direction of the fireball in relation to the observer when
it disappeared, naming, if possible, some town in Kansas or a neighboring
state which was in line with the path of vision.
3) How high above the horizon was the fireball when it disappeared or
was extinguished—this to be stated in degrees, remembering that from
horizon to zenith is 90°.
4) Was any sound heard in connection with or shortly after passing of
the fireball?
Reports piled up, and so did my difficulties. As my file began to bulge
I called in Professor Charles Morris of the physics department, who had
surveying instruments and knew how to use them. We met in my labora-
tory on a Saturday to digest the reports that had accumulated.
A hundred and fifty miles from McPherson, near the end of the Novem-
ber 9 meteor's flight, people had been frantic. They had leaped from their
beds and rushed from their houses in the belief their homes were afire.
Men on the highways stopped their cars, blinded by the flash of light.
Livestock crouched in fear. Children cried and women prayed. A few
moments later, the sounds of blasts and a thunderous roar seemed to
confirm fears that the end of the world had come.
14 FIND A FALLING STAR
leaves the muzzle of his gun. Trained technicians carry out his firing orders
and trained observers correct his judgment.
In Kansas, in November, 1923, no one had expected arrival of the
meteorite. No trained observers were scanning the skies to record its
passage. I had to depend on the memories of startled laymen, who re-
corded their observations or were interviewed several days after the
event.
Most observers were 100 miles away from the passing light. Somehow
the course must be ascertained and projected to a striking point on the
earth. I did not know the speed of the projectile, nor its size, shape, specific
gravity. I could only approximate velocity, height and course. I did not
know if the path changed somewhat after burning out. I could assume that
the meteorite would fall a little more directly as it slowed. But I knew
nothing of air currents or atmospheric conditions. The entire lighted
course was limited to those parts of the atmosphere which were above the
region of exploration of meteorology of that day.
I had marked the line of disappearance of the meteor, as I had witnessed
it, as just behind a branch "next to the top of the pine tree in Mr. Price's
yard down the street."
I added to my own observation the written reports that seemed useful.
Then, in interviewing witnesses, I found that by having them point out
to me stars, nearby objects or perhaps the branches of trees through which
they had looked at the fireball, I was able to determine a consensus as to
the altitude of the meteor's disappearance. By studying the course, the
seeming velocity, reports of an explosion and description of accompanying
sounds, I reached the conclusion that one fragment had fallen in the
vicinity of Coldwater, Kansas, and that another, though with less likeli-
hood, might have fallen to the north near Greensburg.
The best that I felt could be hoped for was the designation of a township
(six miles square), perhaps half a township, in which fragments might have
landed. But how to search half a township? One fact favored me. Meteor-
ites were known in many cases to burst when passing through the air,
scattering in fragments over an area of up to fifty square miles. This
multiplied the chances of finding a part of the fall. Even taking the optimis-
tic view and assuming there were a dozen or fifty fragments, how could
one go about searching such an area?
Everyone has suffered frustrating experiences in searching about his
own premises for some lost or only mislaid article. Consider expand-
ing the area of search to even one square mile. If I were to take a
piece of a brick and bury it a few inches in the ground, announcing it
was buried on a certain square mile, how many searchers would come
forth even if, instead of a piece of a brick, it were something of value?
Most persons would see little use in searching. In spite of the slender
chance of making a find by direct search I couldn't resist a try, and I
16 FIND A FALLING STAR
2
That November night in 1923 when the sky suddenly was cleft by a shaft
of light half as wide as the moon and far brighter, I did not suspect that
the event would change my whole life, but almost immediately I felt
certain effects. Apart from the excitement of trying to plot the course and
recover the meteorite, I found myself completely engrossed, during all the
time I could spare from my college and family duties, in an effort to learn
as much as I could, as fast as I could, about this new subject. I consulted
all the references available, ordered literature, consulted all my profes-
sional acquaintances.
The search for information was less rewarding than had been my search
for the meteorite itself.
I wrote to the Field Museum in Chicago for information and was re-
warded with a copy of Dr. O. C. Farrington's Catalogue of the Meteorites of
North America, published by the National Academy of Science in 1909.
Here was a great fund of information on all of the falls and finds that had
been collected previous to 1909. I studied it avidly, and found that a
generation before my time, in the eighties and early nineties, the state of
Kansas had yielded more than her normal share of meteorite finds made
within the borders of the United States in the past few decades. Among
these finds had been the largest stony meteorite recorded in the world up
to that time and, also, the greatest pallasite (stony-iron meteorite) ever
collected. Surely the University of Kansas at Lawrence would be a fount
of knowledge.
I gathered together enough cash for train fare and a night's lodging at
a third-rate hotel and set out fully confident that I would return with useful
information.
During my frantic search for the November 9 meteorite I had come
across two farmers who had in their possession small meteorites from a
recognized fall for which they had failed to find a market twenty years
before. These I had managed to purchase with borrowed funds. They gave
me the reassurance of first-hand knowledge and I carried them with me
in my brief case.
The train's wheels could not turn fast enough. Every station stop bored
me on that trip to the university. Professional pride demanded that I fill
the wide gap in my knowledge of the world about me.
I was dismayed when members of the geology department at the univer-
sity were unable to answer any of my questions. They not only professed
ignorance of the subject; at first they showed total lack of interest. They
showed me one meteorite specimen on loan from the astronomy depart-
ment where it had lain unlabeled for years. They believed it to be the
Tonganoxie, Kansas, meteorite, but were not quite certain. I looked at the
forty-pound specimen and saw instantly it was a pallasite. Even I had
THE CHALLENGE 19
FINDING A WAY
Although I wanted to give meteorites my full attention, for a while I knew
it would be necessary to hold my teaching job, lecture for fees, do as much
field investigation as I could manage, and sell specimens as I obtained
them.
I had been able to pick up a few bargains in meteorites by purchase, but
what I had counted on being found as a result of my educational program
just had not materialized.
Painstakingly and sometimes painfully, I investigated lead after lead,
only to have each turn out to be a dud. Some of these abortive reports
sounded so infallible that it seemed investigation could not possibly fail
to produce great finds.
During my early survey of the Coldwater fireball in 1923 and 1924, a
former resident of Hodgeman County, about sixty miles north, told me
that when she was a small girl of eight or nine, she and other children used
to play on a large meteorite that lay in the bottom of a hole some three
or four feet deep—a meteorite that her father and neighbors had seen fall.
H e r description of the object was convincing. Various members of the
family had made futile efforts to take samples from the mass, but failed,
and since they knew of no use or value of the thing anyway, nothing
further was done about it. The family moved during her teens and she
knew no more.
In later years I would have placed such a story on a waiting list for future
follow-up when I happened to be passing that way, but in my inexperience
I viewed the report as a must. Such a find might enable me to balance my
budget, which was wearing thin from all my running around. So I made
the trip to Jetmore, the county seat, via train and hired car. By eating cold
lunches and sleeping in cheap rooms, and by delivering a ten dollar lecture
in a high school en route, I managed to pay nearly half the outlay, but the
remainder meant more red ink added to the cost records of my meteorite
hunt. I was able to find absolutely no trace of substantiation for the story.
Mr. Charles H. Hanington, President, Board of Trustees, Colorado Museum of Natural
History who always took an encouraging interest in the author's meteorite work.
•
Dean Gillespie, a meteorite enthusiast who often financed field trips for one-half interest
in the proceeds, if any.
FINDING A WAY 23
that more had been discovered since and could be obtained by purchase,
and I was confident I could secure a permit to remove such finds if I had
attractive exchange specimens to offer.
In some ways the time was not very propitious for going into that
country in 1929—there had been a revolution the year before—but Mex-
ico offered a clear challenge and a possible resource, although revolutions
then occurred in Mexico with almost the regularity of elections in the
United States.
So I began to plan a trip. My wife, Addie, and I were in debt as usual,
but there was nothing crowding us, and we had credit at the bank. I would
take out extra insurance, and my teaching salary would continue through
the Fall semester of 1929 while I would-be away. I approached Alex
Richards, one of my students, about going with me. He spoke Spanish
fluently. He was twenty years old, resourceful, personable and unafraid
of hardship. Alex set about getting together $200 to match mine.
Alex had mechanical experience and aptitude; his favorite reading
seemed to be Popular Mechanics. I asked him to construct an automobile
of the most rugged sort, made up of parts of other cars. I directed him to
make a real husky car, a very ugly one, that nobody would want to try to
steal. He succeeded better than I thought anybody could. No "hot rod"
ever looked quite as tough as that car. It had seven speeds ahead and five
backward, extra clearance and a skid plate to protect its vital parts.
When we reached the border town of Laredo, Texas, in September,
1929, we went to the Chamber of Commerce and asked for advice and
information. We were told nobody drives to Mexico City, and nobody
camps in Mexico. We were warned of a veritable scourge of banditry in
Mexico. We would be robbed and then murdered to prevent the crime
being reported.
The Chamber of Commerce man went on to tell us we would not see
a signpost or a road after leaving Monterrey. He warned, lectured,
pounded his desk. Finally, he marked on our map—not a road map, just
a common geographic map—the areas where banditry was reported to be
the worst. He cautioned us about food, water and disease. He inspected
our Winchester automatic rifle and told us we would need it—if the
authorities would permit us to take it along. He tried in every way he
could to be helpful, at the same time gesturing resignedly and clucking
concernedly. We would never, he declared, reach Mexico City. Or if we
did, we would never return.
Alex and I mustered our courage. We had made so much preparation
we just would not turn back. We carried camera equipment to record our
experiences, a selection of meteorites for exchange and a great cargo of
food supplies and other paraphernalia. We laid out everything in the
glaring sun on the International Bridge across the Rio Grande for the
inspection of Mexican border officials, who looked over each item, down
to the salt and pepper shakers, with courtesy, consideration, and delay.
FINDING A WAY 25
The first 150 miles into Mexico was on graveled road. The Laredo-
Monterrey leg was the only strip yet opened to traffic of Mexico's national
road building program of 1929. As we climbed from Monterrey and
emerged through a mountain pass onto the great desert plateau that
occupies most of northern Mexico, we passed the last of the road workers.
Our route to Mexico City led south from Saltillo, via San Luis Potosi,
but we wished to visit Torreon, some 200 miles across the desert to the
west. Our first three days out of Saltillo were spent in a dreary search for
the right trail. Then the thirsty desert surprised us with a truly beautiful
oasis, an amethyst pool set in the dryland matrix, fringed by marsh grasses
and guarded by a lone stately cotton wood. This watering place was so
welcome we stayed a full twenty-four hours, filling our radiator, catching
up on laundry and collecting jars of insect specimens. From Torreon we
visited Jiminez, where large meteorites had been found a century earlier,
then returned to Saltillo by another way and continued on toward the
capital city.
We averaged forty miles a day, some days covering a hundred, some
days as little as ten miles. We would stop by the roadside, usually near a
village, and light our gasoline stove. Most evenings we prepared flapjacks.
By the time our fire was going well a crowd of onlookers would be thick
around us, not unfriendly, but curious, watching with some fascination the
tossing and fielding of flapjacks in mid-air.
At noon or evening, if we stopped far out from any habitation with not
a soul in sight, it was disconcerning to bring out our lunch and then look
up to see suddenly a couple of men standing among the desert shrubbery
just a few steps away. Perhaps if we turned we would see another visitor
staring at us from behind a bush. We usually would manage to lift our rifle
into view while ostensibly searching for some item among our supplies.
One day we were interrupted at noon by a proud and tough-appearing
caballero, heavily armed, who sat staring while we ate and then followed
us for several miles when we started on. We were glad when he dropped
behind.
One sundown found us, weary, in bandit country, and as we had seen
no house for a long way we picked a spot almost clear of brush and began
setting up camp. Suddenly a very unfriendly looking character ap-
proached, then another showed up, and another. We managed to catch
their interest with some trifle from our pack, then quickly replaced our
gear and drove on. Long after dark we reached a hacienda surrounded by
a high wall with a guard at the gate.
We showed our credentials. The guard hesitated, then sent us on to a
second gate that opened through another wall. H e r e we waited while this
gateman took our papers to yet a third gate near the big house. After some
time we were allowed to pass on to the final gate that opened to the ranch
headquarters. Now a man from the big house, who spoke some English,
came out to us. He examined our papers carefully, looked over our pack
26 FIND A FALLING STAR
and invited us to drive into the passage that led to the central court. We
parked according to his instructions and, being terribly hungry, had begun
eating a cold supper when up drove a big, old-style Buick, loaded with
police, all armed and with machine guns mounted on the running board
of the heavy car. Two officers jumped from the car, demanding in Spanish
to know who we were. We referred them to our host, who spoke to them
at some length. Again we showed our papers; Alex answered questions.
After inspecting our gear the police went their way. Our host told us they
were searching for bandits who had killed a man that afternoon on a
neighboring hacienda. We were not questioned further.
We spent the night there and continued on the next day, arriving in
Mexico City the day following.
The first place Alex and I visited in the capital was the Instituto Geologica.
We knew no one there and carried no letters of introduction. When we
asked about meteorites we were directed to Dr. Frederick K. G. Muller-
ried. The short, stocky German geologist was a great field investigator
who had traveled all over Mexico and later explored New Guinea. He had
discovered a hitherto unknown volcano and a new species of fossil in
Chiapis, a Mexican state bordering on Central America.
I explained to Dr. Mullerried that I had read accounts in the scientific
literature of the large number of iron meteorites found in Mexico, and
asked if he could tell me how to learn something more about Mexican
meteorites.
"I think you have come to Mexico at a fortunate time for you," he told
me. " N o one in Mexico is studying meteorites. There are a number of
meteorite falls that never have been classified."
He arranged for me to see all the specimens in the National Museum.
Immediately I saw that some were mislabeled, some unlabeled. During
times of revolution things had a way of getting mixed up, mishandled,
even lost. I offered to write descriptions of some of the undescribed
meteorites, correct the errors in labeling and help to put the collection in
order. The museum officials were glad to have this done and arranged also
for exchanges of their excess materials for the trading specimens I had
brought with me in hope of just such a possibility.
For several weeks Alex and I worked in the museum cutting samples
from unidentified meteorites, polishing and etching them to establish
identification, labeling, making notes on various specimens including the
history of each find.
H e r e was a use for the skill in which I had been training myself, the
ability to identify the correct origin and classification of nearly any meteor-
ite specimen by surface features and by the etched Widmanstatten pattern
(which often appears when an iron meteorite is cut, polished and etched
with acid).
In the course of my readings about meteorites my attention had been
FINDING A WAY 27
captured by the story of the so-called Toluca fall of Mexico. When Spanish
settlers first visited the little village of Xiquipilco near Toluca and Mexico
City in 1766, they found the natives making implements out of native iron.
At this time the existence of meteorites as matter from space had not been
affirmed by the scientific world. The Xiquipilco community h*d no manu-
factured metal; the natives told visitors they "always" had made their tools
from iron picked up in the fields.
A quarter of a century later, when the arrival of meteorites on earth had
been confirmed, collectors remembered that distant Mexican village. By
1824 visiting scientists had obtained specimens. The natives then still were
using iron fragments from their fields for making implements, but the
creation of a market for the meteorites soon led them to obtain man-made
steel for their tools and they saved the natural iron for sale to visitors. In
the latter part of the nineteenth century great quantities of the material
were shipped from the area. Dr. Jose Aguilera, a noted Mexican geologist,
told me in 1929 that no less than twenty-two tons had been shipped out
prior to 1906.
One of the burning aims of my developing interest in meteorites was
to visit this village of Xiquipilco. Foote and Ward, two mineral dealers
who had done most of the collecting in that area, had died shortly after
the turn of the century. There was nothing in the recent literature about
the Xiquipilco meteorites, and Mexico had been in revolutionary turmoil.
These three facts indicated there might be much to gain from a visit to
Xiquipilco. Perhaps this village, apparently unvisited by a collector for
twenty-five years, would yield specimens at a cost that would enable me
both to augment my personal collection and add to my exchange stock.
I spoke to Dr. Mullerried.
"While I am here I would like to go over to Xiquipilco where they
found so many irons."
" O h , that's true," he said. "They did find many meteorites, but I
haven't heard of anything coming from there for years. Besides, that's
dangerous country."
He was not sure it would be wise for us to try to go but he promised
to make inquiries.
From time to time I would ask him about it, but he never offered any
encouragement. When I mentioned that I should like very much to locate
one of the implements that were reported to have been made from mete-
orites at Xiquipilco, this interested him somewhat more, but still he fos-
tered little hope for the trip. I told him I was set on going even if I must
go alone.
At last one day he announced that he had made arrangements for the
trip if we still wanted to try it. At this time Alex was seriously sick with
amoebic dysentery. Dr. Mullerried himself prepared to go with me.
The little village of Xiquipilco is only about thirty airline miles from
28 FIND A FALLING STAR
mayor left briefly and came back carrying a twenty-pound meteorite. Was
this what we wanted? Dr. Mullerreid and I could barely contain our
excitement.
" D o you think you can get more of this?"
"I think I can get you a ton."
Our host sent out a runner, and while we walked about, waiting for
word to get around, I myself picked up a little three-pound meteorite in
one of the fields. When we came back to the town square there were men
standing with baskets and bags and handfuls of meteorites. For the next
couple of hours we bought meteorites until we ran out of money and the
Indians were still holding up meteorites to sell, crowding about like a
bunch of ants around a bit of syrup. We bought 700 pounds of meteorites.
One of our last purchases was a barreta, a crowbar-like tool fashioned
from a meteorite. It was market day and I had gone through all the wares
displayed in the public square, looking for a meteorite shaped into some
kind of tool, and finding none. Finally I visited the blacksmith shops. At
the fourth and last blacksmith shop I recognized, on a tool way back in
a corner, the Widmanstatten lines that proved meteoritic origin. The
figures were warped and beaten out of shape, but they were visible.
"Where did you get that?" I asked the smith.
"I made it."
"What did you make it out of?"
"Areolito," he replied—the Mexican word for meteorite.
Our visit was a glimpse into a distant and primitive past. The tremen-
dous meteorite shower that occurred at Xiquipilco a hundred thousand to
a million years ago marks that area as one of the most interesting in the
world for any student of meteorites. It is the only place known where from
time past remembering men had forged all of their crude knives, plows,
hammers and other iron utensils out of iron from another world.
I was accumulating considerable information and a good supply of
Mexican meteorites. While examining the National Museum collection I
recognized that a small meteorite labeled as Xiquipilco was a mis-iden-
tified specimen and was able to determine that it came from Chihuahua
City. Through correspondence after my return home I was able to obtain
the main mass of that fall, over 100 pounds. Besides the Xiquipilco
material and the Chihuahua City iron, I acquired specimens of Zacatecas,
Chupaderos, Bacubirito, Tlacoptepec, Puenta del Zacate, Rancho de la
Presa. The total was more than 900 pounds.
After making arrangements for shipping the meteorites back to
McPherson, Alex and I prepared to return to the United States by train.
First we had to sell our hodge-podge automobile. Regret was mixed with
relief, for it was like parting with a fond, if somewhat crazy, friend. It had
served us well.
Sale of the jalopy served as a sort of injection for our flattish billfolds.
30 FIND A FALLING STAR
Later that year we were in Austin and I visited the university. During
a conversation with Dr. J. A. Udden of the bureau of economic geology
he mentioned that the university had found one meteorite during his time
there, and he showed me the Tulia stone which had been plowed up the
year before. He said that he also had tested a small sample of a stone that
was said to have come from Rosebud, but he seemed to know nothing of
the mass from which it had been detached. The sample contained nickel,
but he knew nothing as to the whereabouts of the parent stone. He had
been told that it had been returned to the owner.
As I was leaving him Dr. Udden said he wished that I would go over
to the geology building, on a different part of the campus, and look at a
rock which he believed was in the office of Dr. Frederic W. Simonds, head
of the department of geology. He said it was not considered to be a
meteorite but that he, Dr. Udden, had some misgivings about the identifi-
cation.
A day or so later I went to Dr. Simonds' office. No one was in the office
but the door was open and I immediately saw a most beautiful meteorite
lying in the far corner of the room under a long table. It was quite covered
with dust but I could have little doubt as to its meteoritic character because
of the abundant and wonderfully oriented pittings that covered the entire
visible surface. I hurried out and down the hall in search of the professor.
A short way down the hall I met a man who introduced himself as Profes-
sor Whitney. He informed me that Dr. Simonds was not on duty that
morning but that he would be glad to help me as he was next in command.
I repeated the request of Dr. Udden.
" O h , yes, that stone! Well, come in, I'll be glad to show you."
As he dragged the stone out from under the table, he explained that
someone had thought it might be a meteorite, but that the entire staff had
held a consultation and decided it was just a basaltic boulder that had lain
exposed on a hillside and had acquired those pits by sandblasting.
Dr. Whitney placed the specimen on the table and I began going over
it with my ten-power pocket lens, almost bursting with excitement. My
memory was parading before me all of the pictures I had studied of the
various great meteorites, and this stone under my glass was certainly of
first rank, if not the very finest specimen of all.
The professor leaned over my shoulder.
"Well, what do you think of it?"
" D r . Whitney," I exclaimed, "it not merely is a meteorite; it probably
is one of the finest specimens known!"
"You think so?"
"Yes, I'm sure, but I should like the opportunity to examine a bit of the
interior."
"Well, I'll get you a sample," and with that he struck a shattering blow
with a heavy hammer, sending chips flying about.
FINDING A WAY 35
"Oh, please, don't mar the specimen," I cried. "It's too beautiful. I had
in mind that it should be cut."
I picked up one chip about the size of my thumb and two or three
smaller fragments. When I ground and polished them later, one of these
smaller bits revealed beautiful chondrules and nickel-iron grains. Chon-
drules are small rounded bodies commonly found in stony meteorites.
Another I dispatched to Dr. Merrill of the United States National Mu-
seum in Washington.
He sent a brief reply, "I find no evidence of meteoric origin," returning
the specimen as I had requested.
At once I sent it again, begging him to grind and polish the inner face.
A two-word reply came back: "Unquestionably meteoric."
My request for the privilege of describing this meteorite went un-
heeded, and when I returned to the university two years later I was
refused permission to photograph it. Yet nothing seemed to have been
done in the way of publication.
On my second visit I asked about the place of discovery of the beautiful
meteorite, alias the sandblasted basaltic boulder. If Dr. Simonds remem-
bered, he chose not to tell. He made an apparent effort to recall, then said,
"possibly Glen Rose."
Thus, in 1933, when my first book about meteorites, Our Stone-Pelted
Planet, was published, I listed the Texas stone as Glen Rose, for it still had
not been officially described.
I did not know during my 1925 visit to the University of Texas that this
fine specimen was the Rosebud meteorite that had been described to me
in Kansas. I thought it might be, but that probably it was not, for Dr. Crow
had spoken of an "iron," and Dr. Udden, when he mentioned examining
a small sample of a stone from Rosebud, certainly gave no hint that it
might have come from the mass he sent me to Dr. Simonds' office to see.
Up to this time I had accepted the report, relayed to me by the Waters
family and the Rosebud editor, that the specimen taken to the university
by the captain had been lost.
Having noted the seemingly total lack of scientific interest in the sub-
ject at the university, I continued to search for the Rosebud "iron." I
corresponded with and visited relatives of Captain Waters in Alice,
Texas. Hearing that I had offered in Rosebud to buy the specimen if it
could be found, they joined other members of the family in a spirited
search for it. The captain's relatives approached the geology department
of the university in an attempt to recover "their specimen," but the
university spokesmen, they reported, insisted that the captain's stone had
been returned.
In any event, the Rosebud specimen was not described in the literature
until fourteen years had passed since my identification of it as a meteorite.
There was no mention of my name in the tardy description of this fine
36 FIND A FALLING STAR
oriented stone which I had been first to recognize and which I had been
denied permission later to photograph.
At that time, the middle twenties, all talk of rockets for exploration was
regarded as the wildest of fiction, but I believed that man was destined
to explore more and more of the universe by all possible means. Since
meteorites constituted the only material source of information available,
they must be the most important inorganic objects on this earth, fraught
with information about the cosmos that could be obtained in no other way,
and about the earth itself, which doubtless they had been bombarding
throughout all geologic time. It seemed plain fact that meteorites could
never become less important; certainly they must grow more so. Response
to my lectures seemed to forecast a great increase in the number of
collectors of meteorites among individuals as well as institutions.
There was just one jarring aspect of all my theorizing: Scientists them-
selves were remaining aloof from meteorites. Dr. Merrill's frank state-
ment that there was not much more to be learned from meteorites appar-
ently was dismaying only to me, his attitude being no surprise to anyone
else.
No one seemed to share my view that any meteorite of any size must
be more important than any other material on earth. Since my area of
interest had no scientific standing there was only one way for me to go,
and that was up. I was able to turn to my advantage this near-total disinter-
est that surrounded the subject of meteorites at the time my own fascina-
tion with it was becoming all-consuming.
I learned that less than ten per cent of the colleges and universities and
practically none of the high schools and academies or small museums had
a single specimen of meteorite, to say nothing of a collection. It was my
opinion that meteorites were far more important than most minerals,
fossils and other natural history specimens that were featured in those
same institutions.
I also discovered what I considered to be a very short-sighted practice
among the few museums, universities and colleges that had taken an
interest in collecting and studying meteorites. In general, when the discov-
ery of a new meteorite was announced each of these institutions would
purchase a specimen from the mineral dealer who had acquired it or make
an exchange for one if the new discovery had been purchased by an
institution. If subsequently another individual meteorite turned up in the
same general area and it resembled the previous find it was considered to
belong to the same fall and was not in demand unless one of the few
collecting institutions had failed to obtain a sample of the first one. And
when a large number belonging to the same fall were found within a short
time, there would be a ready market for them until each of the collectors
was supplied, and then any remaining specimens would become a drug on
the market.
FINDING A WAY 37
Just before daylight February 17, 1930, the fall of a meteorite in the
vicinity of Paragould, Arkansas, occasioned fear and wonderment. The
press carried various announcements concerning the great fireball, which
was visible over many thousands of square miles covering portions of
several states. Though the spectacle occurred at an early morning hour
when most people still were asleep—about 4:00 o'clock—the fireball's
dazzling light and the accompanying detonations brought many persons
from their beds. Testimony of a number of them that the ages-old expecta-
tion of mankind's demise by fire still was nourished in many minds.
A few hours after the heavenly display, Raymond Parkinson, a farmer
who had been awakened by the light and the explosion, went into his field
for his horses and came upon a freshly made hole. Investigation revealed
an eighty-five pound fragment of stony meteorite lodged in the pit.
Parkinson sent me a sample, suggesting I might be interested in pur-
chase of the stone. Since I had no Friday afternoon classes, Addie and I
promptly arranged to leave the children with her sister next door and set
out immediately on the 700-mile drive. Though roads were none too
good, we took turns at the wheel, made only necessary station stops,
lunched on the way and were at Paragould in twenty-four hours.
38 FIND A FALLING STAR
directed the search to the area where the meteorite had been found and
that they were bidding on a meteorite for the recovery of which I had been
largely responsible. The bidding ceased, but not before the price had gone
to $3100, more than I could afford to pay and keep the specimen. I
instructed my attorney to buy, realizing I would have to borrow to make
the purchase and that I would have to sell the meteorite subsequently. I
finally paid $3600 for the Paragould meteorite.
Two of my McPherson friends had come forward when the negotiations
first began, each offering to lend me $1,000 without interest. The vice
president of Citizens Bank informed me there was no need to bother my
friends, that the bank would lend me the full amount. He handed me a
blank note to sign and said that when I learned the exact amount needed
I should wire the bank and the proper amount would be filled in. Mean-
while I was to write a check upon my personal account. The meteorite was
placed on display in the bank's Main Street window until it was sold a few
months later.
The 800-pound Paragould meteorite was found lying in a crater some
eight feet wide and just a few inches more than eight feet deep. This hole
was only about thirty feet from the pasture gate of a man named Fletcher,
no more than 300 yards from his house. Fletcher had looked from his
window at the time of the fall, while his frightened wife knelt praying. He
knew of all the excitement of the farm and town folk. He must have known
of the find of the Parkinson specimen. And yet, when he noticed the
yawning hole by his gate, he blamed it on the digging of dogs. It was his
neighbor, W. H. Hodges, who chanced to pass through Fletcher's gate
and became curious about the big hole. He brought Fletcher to the scene
and they took a slender pole and sank it through the water and mud in
the hole and struck the hard mass of the meteorite in the depths.
Hodges, who lived three-eighths of a mile from the hole, described the
fall and finding of the hole:
Was going off* the porch when light went out. Almost at once heard
definite violent explosion from about 4 5° angle above and about 38°
west of south from him.* Second detonation from 45° above horizon
and slightly more east than north, perhaps two or three seconds after
first. Was first man to find hole. Fixing fence and came to get a pole.
A week before the pasture had been burnt off and revealed pile of
clay thrown by meteorite—immediately thought it was a piece of the
meteorite. Round hole eight feet in diameter, depth of eight inches
from surface, was vertical, and loose dirt tapered to funnel from this
eight-inch level. Held tub of water in bottom of funnel and bottom
of hole of water was two feet below level of surface. Got Joe Fletcher
* Measurements were mine, made by having him sight on an instrument.
40 FIND A FALLING STAR
and took slender stake, punched straight down from middle seven or
eight feet, found nothing. Moved eighteen inches southwest and hit
rock about eighteen or twenty inches down. Gobs of dirt thrown fifty
yards all around hole, probably more south and southwest than in
other directions. Nine feet to bottom of rock. Big bump end of rock
against west of southwest wall. Shallowest rock lay about fifteen to
twenty-four inches west of southwest of center of hole.
That same evening of the day Hodges found it, a small hole was dug
down through the mud to the stone in the hole. The next morning the
meteorite was taken out, requiring three hours of work by five men with
a team.
While we were in Paragould making settlement for the big stone,
Parkinson arrived in town. News of the generous price being paid was just
more than he could bear. He strode resolutely to the high school and
called on the principal, upon whom he placed blame for the loss of his
meteorite, led him into the school yard and administered physical retribu-
tion. Then he marched his man to the police station, told his story, paid
a $2.50 fine to sympathetic authorities and sent the educator back to his
school. Parkinson ultimately was awarded the $300 that had been paid for
his meteorite.
The Paragould meteorite was the largest known to have been seen to
fall up to that time, and also then was the largest known intact stony
meteorite in the world.
Many years after the Paragould fall, I was told a tale about Paragould
that is an example of the way the accounts of meteorites, particularly
relative to their size and to the size of prices paid for them, sometimes
become distorted. The fellow recounted that he had seen the fall of the
Paragould meteorite, and that the stone was so hot it couldn't be touched
for two weeks. The fall had "lighted up the whole place like daylight,"
he reported. He described the meteorite as weighing a hundred tons.
"Big as half a room." The buyer, he said, had resold the meteorite for
$400,000.
The actual dimensions of the Paragould meteorite are twenty-nine by
twenty-eight by twenty-seven inches. And the price I received for it was
$6,200.
The Paragould meteorite had profound effects on our lives. I have
never ceased to regret parting with it, but I had paid a price too high, and
was forced to give up either the specimen or my dream of making meteor-
ites a new vocation. And Paragould, with the $2,000 profit it brought, was
the way to my dream.
Addie and I were feeling our oats. In two months we had been reim-
bursed for all our time and effort, with profit besides. Neither of us could
think that it might be many years before such another windfall. I had been
FINDING A WAY 41
5. ON VARIOUS TRAILS
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, while on a truck delivery during the spring of
1932, I stopped for a brief visit to the anthropological museum there,
intending to inquire about a small meteorite that recently had been found
in a pottery vessel in an ancient ruin. I parked my truck in the lot and went
in.
As I was passing among the exhibits, quite unexpectedly I met Dr.
Alexander Wetmore, director of the United States National Museum,
who happened to be in Santa Fe on a one-day visit. On a bench outside
the building Dr. Wetmore and I sat and visited, turning our talk to
meteorites. When he asked how our work was going, I grinned and waved
at my truck parked nearby. On the spot he offered a tentative arrangement
for some field work the following summer in the northwest part of the
country on behalf of the National Museum.
We made vacation arrangements for the children, and Addie and I
undertook several projects, including an investigation into the Port Or-
ford, Oregon, meteorite story.
The Port Orford case is an enigma. This famous pallasite has never been
rediscovered since it was seen first in 1859 by Dr. John Evans, a govern-
ment geologist, who reported that he detached a small sample from a
parent mass estimated at 22,000 pounds, but died before actually mapping
the site. We, like other searchers, found no trace of it.
Some scientists became convinced the great mass never existed, that the
sample collected represented only a small mass and that Dr. Evans had
become confused in his memory as to where he had obtained it. To me
it appears unlikely that a geologist could detach a piece of pallasite from
any parent mass without holding in his mind a very reliable picture of the
source of the fragment. Field experience has prepared me to understand
just how plausible it is that such a great meteorite could exist, just as
described, and yet remain unfound. Indeed, I should be greatly surprised
if it is ever rediscovered though I feel very sure it exists.
J. D. Figgins, Director, Denver Museum of Natural History.
Flight over Meteor Crater. Herbert and Page Fales. H. H. Nininger and photographer, Otto Rouch.
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 43
Ray volunteered to run the saw for a very nominal charge per hour,
proposing that payment for his work should be postponed "until you can
pay me out of the income from the business beyond your living expenses."
Ours was the first commercial cutting laboratory for meteorites in the
United States. The only other such equipment in this country was that at
the United States National Museum. Often we obtained new specimens
as payment in trade for the cutting. Slices of meteorites cut in our labora-
tory went to every great museum in the world.
To cut these exceedingly tough hunks of metal we used an abrasive saw,
a band of soft steel without teeth, run on a regular bandsaw frame such
as is used in a carpenter shop, but operated at a much slower speed.
The bands of soft steel were made to order. They were two or three
inches wide and were used until they were worn down to a width of about
an inch. As the band revolved, a trickle of water carrying carborundum,
the cutting agent, was directed against the biting edge where it entered
the meteorite, mounted firmly on the saw table.
It was intriguing to watch that smooth, harmless looking band eat away
at a stubborn iron meteorite. The piece would be imbedded in plaster of
paris to steady it on the saw table, and there it would rest for hour after
hour or day after day, while the saw slowly gnawed through it.
The saw stood taller than a man, the band measuring eighteen and a half
feet and running on two thirty-six-inch wheels. It had one stationary table
on which was mounted a track which carried a movable table operated by
a screw with sprocket wheel. On this moving platform was another smaller
table that moved at right angles to the larger movable one and on which
the meteorites were mounted in plaster.
The cutting required an average of about an hour per square inch, with
the mechanic standing by meanwhile to adjust speed and pressure to
accommodate any unusually hard obstructions encountered.
The largest slice we cut and exhibited, a beautiful nickel-iron that mea-
sured seventeen and a half by thirteen inches, required about nine weeks
of sawing.
By the close of the summer session of 1930 the lab for cutting and
polishing had been set up and paid for, and we began cutting the Mexican
meteorites at once. The saw ran steadily in Ray's little store in Palmer
Lake, providing specimens that sold readily. Soon I had two new meteor-
ites from Nebraska and one from Colorado. Ward's Natural Science Es-
tablishment was selling my material on consignment about as fast as I could
supply it. Things in Denver seemed to have started off in our favor.
Alex Richards and I had been deep in the interior of Mexico in October,
1929, when news was flashed of the greatest stock market crash in history.
When Alex mentioned the headlines I remember thinking, "That will not
affect me." To me it had seemed that since I never had dabbled in stock
buying I would not be injured, a measure of how little attention I ever
44 FIND A FALLING STAR
About this time I was offered a university position that involved teach-
ing almost entirely. I reasoned that acceptance would put an end to my
investigations. Turning down the offer, with economic conditions as they
were, was a good deal like refusing a life line while aboard a drifting raft,
but my life objective had become so fixed that I made the rejection
without a qualm and returned to the daily struggle that was required by
my chosen work. I felt that such a teaching commitment would kill my
field program, because classes would take up so much of my time that very
little if any field work could be accomplished. I chose to continue the risks
of making my program self-supporting.
Even in McPherson the problem of financing an expensive hobby had
made our mode of living somewhat more austere than that of the average
professor's family. After I left the college it was evident that our growing
collection of meteorites would absorb our entire effort and would consti-
tute our entire estate. When the depression years reduced our market
possibilities, we gave up owning a house and moved into a rental house.
We borrowed to the limit on life insurance policies. There were periods
when the purchase of a pair of children's shoes was an occasion for a family
conference, and when the replacement of Dad's suit was solved via patches
on the old one. The menu was dictated by economy rather than taste.
If there ever was a month during that time of our children's growth to
adulthood when payment of our bills did not demand the best that was
in us, Addie and I never have been able to recall it. What we managed
to do was to tie together our working arrangement with the museum,
cutting and polishing operations, the lecture schedules and investigative
trips with just enough in sales of specimens and fees from lectures to
finance another trip, to permit scheduling more speeches, to recover some
new specimen to cut and sell.
As the nation sank deeper and deeper into the trough of the depression
there was less and less money for either lectures or specimens, but even
during the worst years there remained a few good customers. Teachers
still were being paid and some who had heard my lectures became deter-
mined to acquire a meteorite specimen or even a small collection. Some
institutions could purchase meteorites for their departments of geology,
astronomy or earth sciences. Museum curators and even a few business-
men were among our customers.
We functioned first as The Nininger Laboratory, and in 1937 took the
name The American Meteorite Laboratory.
My curatorship at the museum gave me a base of operations. There was
an understanding that mutual arrangements could be made for the mu-
seum to participate in field projects from time to time on a fifty-fifty basis,
but there was no obligation on either party to accept such a cooperative
proposal. Our contract consisted of an exchange of letters and verbal
understandings. The arrangement lasted fifteen years and ended amicably.
During those years my field program brought to light nearly 200 meteor-
46 FIND A FALLING STAR
ite falls, aggregating about 1,500 meteorites, not counting several thou-
sand from each of several craters.
There were long periods when all visible evidence spelled failure.
There were many times when the larder approached emptiness, and the
bottom of the barrel was scraped so often that we could almost see through
it. It was a very difficult thing to make a living for a family and at the same
time hold on to my objective of seeing a science of meteoritics developed,
with a companion dream of sponsorship by an institute of meteoritical
research. Our practice was never to part with the bulk of a new meteorite.
We would remove one or more slices and let them go to the few institu-
tions and collectors who furnished a ready market, then store the remain-
der.
The collection seemed to grow with amazing rapidity. The cataloging
alone was a large chore, and correspondence was heavy. Addie, near the
beginning, decided to handle the office detail involved with our meteorite
search. Certainly there was no money for secretarial help.
The whole family cooperated. The children did not demand luxury; no
good would have been served to ask. Our one luxury was a good car, a
serviceable one to carry the load of our field work.
Asked how we managed to finance our program, my usual answer was
to the effect that I hardly knew myself how we did it. We always seemed
so busy doing it that we never could find time to figure out how it was
being done. We never stopped to worry about the over-all problem of
finance. We simply solved the immediate problems month by month, kept
our credit good at the bank, paid off notes, signed new notes, worked
harder and went ahead.
Always in the background of our thinking was the realization that we
were steadily amassing a stock of meteorites which, if worse came to worst,
we could depend on to see us through. I knew that the value of meteorites
had through a hundred years proven far more stable than any currency or
coin of the realm. Their status was something like that of diamonds—they
were virtually indestructible, with proper care, and of everlasting value,
despite the fact that for many years interest in them had faded. I held to
the belief that man's next step in exploration would be into space. Cer-
tainly material from space must carry a premium.
At about the time the Smithsonian cut off the short-lived arrangement
to buy specimens from us in some quantity, thus just about sinking our
little boat, rescue came our way in the guise of a man and a White truck.
The house into which we first moved in Denver was only a few blocks
away from Dean Gillespie's White Truck distributing agency for the
Southwest.
Dean M. Gillespie later served a term in Congress, and his business
enterprises eventually reached into other fields, but when I knew him first
he was guiding his truck agency through the hazards of the depression.
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 47
Dean was the one man who most consistently offered me a way through
financial thickets during the years from 1931 to 1946.1 met him soon after
we moved to Denver, having been told by a mutual friend that Dean was
an amateur meteorite collector. After hunting up his office I walked in,
gestured toward a big meteorite lying on his desk, said I guessed this must
be the place I was looking for and gave my name.
Gillespie leaped to his feet.
" W e are two people of the same mind," he told me, and went on to
describe his interest and his specimens.
On better acquaintance, having learned I operated habitually on a shoe-
string, he made a proposal that proved to be of mutual benefit and that
served to keep me going financially in a number of instances over a period
of some ten years.
Addie and I never knew when a fireball would appear that we would
wish to chase down, or when we might hear of a meteorite somewhere
that called for a trip of investigation and possible purchase, and of course
we were nearly always broke.
When such occasions arose and I was short of cash, Dean would advance
me money enough to make the trip, our agreement being that if the effort
were successful, we would divide—but if nothing came of it, I had simply
lost my time, and Dean had lost his money. Sometimes, if a project offered
slender promise of returns, I would guarantee its cost by supplying mete-
orites already in my possession.
Dean helped me additionally, in an unusual way. O n e day, he called me
into his office.
"Can you drive a truck?"
"I never did," I answered, "but I suppose I could."
Dean explained to me that he thought he could help me out. As a
distributor he had trucks driven into Denver from the factory in Cleve-
land, Ohio, and he also delivered trucks to various localities in the West.
"My drivers get four dollars a day and expenses," Dean told me. "I'll
pay you the same. If you want to stop on the way and get some work done
for yourself you can do that on your own time and expense."
So I became a part-time truck driver. Some of the lecture appointments
I kept during those years were reached by truck transport. When I attained
my destination I spruced up, changed my clothes and headed for the
auditorium. After my lecture and a night's sleep, I would return to my
truck and the road, my suitcase in the cab behind me. So far as I am aware
neither my audiences nor the arrangements committees ever suspected
their speaker had come from truck cab to lectern. I was not proud, but I
respected institutional sensitivities.
This system allowed me to visit museums and study collections en route,
to make meteorite exchanges with various collectors and on several occa-
sions made possible the recovery of new meteorites.
48 FIND A FALLING STAR
Meteorites. The door stood open and a few steps back from it sat a woman
doing needle work who evidently was in charge of the place. Immediately
inside the door stood a tall, narrow pyramid of shelves, loaded with
choice, colorful mineral specimens, its base piled about with huge chunks
of different ores from the various mines of this rich mining state. As I
stepped on the threshold I saw the blunt end of a large iron meteorite
projecting from the pile of ore specimens.
After moving the ore, I was certain that this was a specimen of the same
fall I had examined in Mexico City. The custodian permitted measuring,
weighing and photographing of the meteorite, and said that the Museum
belonged to El Governador.
From the lobby of the hotel I called the United States consul and he
agreed to assist me. The governor was out of town, not to be back until
manana. The next day the reply was the same, and the next, and so for
a week. Meanwhile, however, I was proceeding on my own, conferring
with the consul and going about the city in search for a proper container
for the meteorite. Wooden boxes suitable to such a purpose were almost
unknown in Mexico.
Finally, the governor, Sefior I. Andres Ortiz, returned. A crowd of
citizens awaited him in the anteroom of his office. The consul interpreted
my plan. Recognizing the mutual advantage of having the meteorite stud-
ied properly and labeled correctly, the governor promptly authorized me
to take the meteorite to Denver, cut it in half, return one half, properly
polished, etched and labeled, to the Chihuahua Museum, and retain the
othe** half for this service.
From my half of the Huizopa meteorite I cut several slices for museums
whose budget had not felt the depression too deeply, at prices that defi-
nitely bolstered our frail budget. During the course of the year following
its acquisition, the Huizopa meteorite brought in a couple of thousand
dollars, a considerable return for my personal investment and far beyond
the wages of my truck assignment.
2
On the afternoon of May 10, 1931, W. H. Foster was hoeing in his
garden at Eaton, Colorado, when he was attracted by a humming sound,
not unlike that of a stray bullet, which seemed to come from the northern
sky. A half-minute or so later the sound seemed louder, as if approaching
him. Foster leaned on his hoe handle and listened; this seemed a long time
for a bullet to whine. He scanned the sky but saw nothing.
As the noise grew louder he feared being hit and took a step backward.
He felt the air blast in his face as an object whizzed past and struck with
a thud about seven feet south and a little west of where he stood. Looking
down he saw where the sun-baked crust of the soil had been broken up,
50 FIND A FALLING STAR
and projecting from the moist dirt thus exposed was a small, bright bit of
metal.
Foster pondered for a moment, then stooped to pick up the object,
"burning" his fingers, he said later, as he did so.* Puzzled, he walked
across the street to show it to John C. Casey, the high school superintend-
ent. Casey was as much puzzled as Foster, and called in the science teacher,
Glen Mills. The janitor came also. But none had an answer. This was no
bullet, but neither did it resemble the meteorites on display in the museum
in Denver. Mills was quite sure he never had heard of a copper meteorite,
and the nugget looked more like molten copper than anything else.
Could it be a burned-out bearing of an airplane? None had heard a
plane that morning, nor had Foster seen any as he scanned the sky seeking
the source of the strange, whizzing sound. There was not often a plane in
the air over the village of Eaton in the year 1931.
The matter remained an unsolved mystery. No publicity was given it.
But Mills, the science teacher, was not satisfied. Three weeks after the
event he attended a science meeting at which I was present also and
described the happening to me, requesting me to investigate Foster's
coppery nugget.
I called on Mr. Foster, accompanied on the visit by J. D. Figgins,
Director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, and Frank How-
land, mineralogist, and H. C. Markman, geologist, both of the museum
staff.
Foster was cordial and cooperative. He showed us the specimen and
told us the same story he had recited to Casey the day of the fall. The
possibility that the thing was a meteorite had been suggested to him; he
had no idea of his own what it might be. We all agreed the object differed
notably from any known meteorite and, though none of us could offer any
other explanation of the occurrence, it could not be considered a meteor-
ite on the basis of the accepted criteria by which meteorites are recog-
nized.
But I could not be satisfied to leave the matter there. An intensive study
of the surface features of meteorites had convinced me these markings
constitute one of the very best identifying characteristics of meteorites.
When I had examined the coppery nugget under my ten-power lens the
surface was shown to be pitted in a manner that was unknown to me in
any metallic object other than a meteorite.
Since the first recognition of meteorites by science in 1803 there had
been seen to fall a new variety of meteorite on an average of every
*The usual report by persons who have picked up meteorites soon after fall is that they
are "cold." There have been a few reports that metallic meteorites have been "too hot to
hold," and o n e lad described a newly fallen iron as "too cold to touch." Meteorites have
been known to fall into haystacks without igniting them. The g o o d heat conductivity of
copper could explain the warm condition of the specimen reported by Foster.
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 51
ing the space where he believed he saw something fall? Were the thing
he heard and the thing he picked up one and the same?
Sometime, perhaps, complete chemical analysis, or the new spectro-
scopic, isotopic tests that measure exposure to cosmic bombardment, or
a new, verified, witnessed fall of a copper meteorite, will provide a final
determination of the origin of the Eaton specimen.
In the summer of 1931 Addie and I traveled with the family through
the broad wheat fields of Saskatchewan on our way to visit my sister and
her family in a northern settlement of that Canadian province.
There was little vegetation other than wheat and there were quite a few
rock piles tossed up along the fences. This seemed a likely area for meteor-
ites. I stopped at the offices of the Saskatoon Star to request that a news
story be run that might alert interest and result in a find.
The editor of the Star suggested that I write the piece myself. I ad-
dressed farmers suggesting they might very well have hauled meteorites
along with the country rock dumped beside their fences. I explained how
to recognize meteorites, stressed the importance of recovering these
stones from the sky, and, as always, directed that they chip off but a small
corner of any likely specimen, thus avoiding damage to the whole.
A few weeks after we had returned to Denver our mail brought a
sample, weighing about an ounce, and plainly meteoritic, from a
farmer near Springwater, Saskatchewan. The finder wrote that he had
found the parent mass, weighing about forty-four pounds, many years
before, and that he had sent a sample at that time to the provincial
assayer, who had reported that the piece appeared to be artificial iron
that probably had leaked out of a furnace. The assayer added that the
thing had no value.
I requested the farmer, a Mr. Ward, to send me the main mass, which
he did. When he received my check in return he wrote that he had found
more of the meteorite, and he kept on searching until he had found about
a dozen individuals weighing about 200 pounds total.
Some months later another sample arrived from Saskatchewan, a tiny
bit of meteorite, only the size of a grain of corn, sent in by Mr. A. D.
Ebner, a farmer near Bruno.
Ebner reported that he had been hauling rocks from his field and when
he started to put one chunk into his stone-boat he found it was so heavy
it required both hands to lift it. He gave it a second look, remembered
the article in the newspaper and decided to send in a sample.
The Bruno specimen proved to be a very well preserved, beautifully
oriented meteorite, one of the finest examples of metallic meteorites
known, so unusual that its picture has been carried in many publications.
Only the one piece ever was found. Mr. Ebner had treated it with great
care. Had he acted with the roughness and disregard with which many
54 FIND A FALLING STAR
With the hope of obtaining more of the Springwater fall and with the
thought that there might be a recognizable crater associated with it, Addie
and I went again to Saskatchewan in 1950.
In our 1931 correspondence with Mr. Ward, he had told us a really
tantalizing story of the "big one that got away." Before he had learned
the true value of the heavy dark rocks he had thrown away the largest one
he ever found.
" W e were filling up a well about seventy or eighty feet deep," he
related. "I was hauling rocks to fill it up, and this particular rock was so
heavy we used a team to pull it onto the stone-boat, and then when I got
to the well it was all I could do to dump it. I tore my hands on it rolling
it into the well."
When we called at the old Ward farm in 1950, we found it being
operated by a Mr. Staples, who took us out to search for the old well, but
it had been filled in very efficiently and the field had been cultivated over
it for thirty years; we couldn't tell exactly where it was.
This situation called for a detecting instrument. There are two kinds:
mine detectors and magnetometers. A mine detector is a device developed
by the army for the purpose of detecting explosive mines and "booby
traps." The device was long used by treasure hunters and since the mid-
30's by meteoriticists in a search for buried meteorites. It is an electromag-
netic device, often described as a magnetic balance which gives a signal
to its operator when passed over a metallic object. It is used only after a
location has been made by a find.
A magnetometer is a very delicate device for measuring the earth's
magnetic field, used for detecting ore bodies and by geophysicists to
detect anomalies in the earth's gravitational or magnetic field. Obviously
it can also be used to locate buried meteorites, after one has determined
that a fall has occurred in a given area by the accidental discovery of one
or more specimens.
We went over the area with a detecting instrument in case the meteorite
was in the top part of the fill, but we had no luck. Then we decided to
go over the rest of the field with the instrument, and here we met a
problem. I hadn't gone fifty steps until my earphone gave a beautiful bark,
and we began to dig frantically. We dug down a couple of feet and
brought out a beautiful granite boulder.
"Granite shouldn't give out a sound like that," I protested, but I passed
the instrument over it and got the same bark. Examining the granite
closely we saw that it seemed to have little particles of magnetite; I learned
later that this is a very common constituent of certain granites. In that
glacial region they seemed to have every kind of granite—white granite,
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 55
pink granite, blue granite, gray granite, black and brown granite. As we
went about the field we dug up about fifty granite boulders. One variety
—not the blackest nor the heaviest—would sound persistently in the
earphones just like a meteorite.
As a substitute for exploring with the detector, we decided to scout the
pastures still free of cultivation in hope of finding a mass still projecting
from the ground, or perhaps a depression that might represent a small
crater, partly filled in. The land was too rough and rocky for an automo-
bile. The farmer lent us a team and a two-wheeled rubber-tired cart used
as a handy get-around over the farm. It had two automobile wheels sup-
porting a bed about six feet long and two and one-half feet wide, with a
seat set up on it for the driver. Addie drove the two huge draft horses and
I stood hanging onto a support, like some old-time charioteer, gazing out
over the countryside while we swerved around or bumped over hum-
mocks, sloughs, boulders and holes.
Except for obtaining a twenty-pound specimen that Mr. Staples already
had, we didn't gain anything from that second trip beyond a fair certainty
that the wheat fields and pasture land concealed no meteorite crater.
The Springwater specimens belong to the rather rare class of pallasite
meteorites and are among the most beautiful we ever collected. Almost
thirty years after I acquired the first Springwater specimen, two young
scientists of the Fermi Institute in Chicago discovered in it a new mineral,
one that was not known before either in the earth or in meteorites.
introduced myself. I reminded the men of the fall two years before and
talked casually and very briefly, then started to the store across the road,
since they showed little interest and seemed even irritated at my interrup-
tion of their chat.
Half way, one of the men caught up with me and told me, in a low voice
and with some embarrassment, that he had "one of those" at home. We
drove the two and a half miles to his house and he hunted around until
he located a walnut-sized piece of what evidently was part of a larger
meteorite that had been destroyed by hammering. He told me he had
found several stones out in the field that he never had brought in, some
larger than his fist.
"Didn't you know that Gaines had sold stones like this?" I asked him.
"Yes."
"Why didn't you send yours in, too?"
"I don't know."
Several of his children were playing in his yard. Their ragged clothing,
the house furnishings and the general run-down condition of the place
spelled poverty. Why didn't this man, and others like him whom I met in
similar circumstances at other times and places, gather in and sell those
stones of whose value they were aware? Suspicion? Superstition? Any
number of times I ran into this taciturnity, this reluctance. Perhaps it was
hesitancy to "meddle with things from heaven."
The man in Beardsley agreed to look for more meteorites. I bought the
little piece he had and arranged with the local bank to advance payment
for others that might be brought in. During the next sixty days six stones,
weighing from several ounces to twenty and one-half pounds, came from
Beardsley. Some had been in the possession of the finders since October,
1929. Others were found during the autumn plowing which was in pro-
gress during the time of the several visits I made to the town during
August and September of 1931. During the next two years a total of sixty
specimens were recovered from this fall.
The man who plowed up the largest meteorite said that he had plowed
up another of about the same size or a little larger. He carried it on his
plow to the edge of the field and threw it over the fence on the roadside.
After learning of its value he went to retrieve it, but meanwhile the
highway maintenance men had cut away the bank, building a big grade
and evidently burying the stone.
3
The market for meteorite specimens, always extremely limited, had
waned to such an extent by 1930 that the only two dealers, Foote and
Ward, were trying to liquidate their stock by marking prices far below
normal. Their supply consisted mostly of left-overs from old finds, exam-
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 57
pies of which long since had been purchased by the few institutions that
still bought meteorites. Thus I was able to take slices or fragments of my
recent finds and trade them advantageously for much greater amounts of
the stock the dealers had on hand. Before making such trades I would
make such cash sales as I could to institutions and collectors for ready
money to live on. I retained the bulk of every find, cataloging these main
masses as the Nininger Collection.
When Addie and I began visiting Denver and Colorado Springs with
our summer school students in 1922, window displays of minerals were
common. Offices and homes of geologists and assayers contained hand-
some display cases full of specimens. By the time we moved to Denver
in 1930, however, well-cared-for collections had become very scarce.
Nevertheless, I made it a point to look over all the rock and mineral
collections I could locate in assay offices, windows of barber shops or small
stores—anywhere there was a display of stones. Down on Larimer Street
in lower downtown, in a dingy window, there was such a collection of
minerals. The tenant was a bachelor of middle age who in response to my
inquiry pulled out a drawer, reached in and brought forth a four-ounce
stony meteorite, about the size of a golf ball although irregular in shape.
" W e found this more than thirty years ago. We were stacking hay on
a ranch near Doyleville, in western Colorado, and I was helping though
I was only a youngster. One day when we got out to the field there was
a black rock, maybe the size of a brick, lying next to the hay stack. We
couldn't account for it."
His father had taken it to Gunnison to a collector who identified it as
a meteorite and to whom it was given. The small piece shown to me had
been detached from the larger stone.
I bought the little stone and later visited Doyleville and Gunnison.
When the collector died his minerals had been given to the state college
at Gunnison.
My inquiry about the "Jennings Collection" at the state college in
Gunnison, Colorado, resulted in my being shown two or three cases of
moderate size containing quite a number of small and poorly displayed
specimens. The original mineral collection was said to have lined three
walls of a room some sixteen by thirty-two feet, shelved to the height of
a man's reach. It was reported that all of the large specimens had been
hauled to the dump for lack of space.
I knew of several colleges which formerly proudly displayed fine min-
eral collections, the work of dedicated professors, that no longer spared
space for such exhibits. On one occasion a janitor led me up dusty stair-
ways, through narrow, dark halls and over a partially floored attic to the
resting place of what once had been reputed to be one of the finest mineral
collections in Pennsylvania. With the aid of a flashlight I scanned a huge
pile, more than a ton, of dumped mineral specimens. Labels were scattered
58 FIND A FALLING STAR
about and many fine specimens had been separated from their wrappings.
Cabinet drawers lay empty about the distressing heap of specimens. The
collection had been cleared out to make room for "more practical things."
Like treatment was given many other notable mineral collections during
the early decades of the century.
Meteorite collections were down-graded in the same way. Harvard's
mineralogical museum retired a large part of its exhibit in the late twen-
ties. The American Museum of Natural History retired all but a few
specimens of outstanding size. The National Collection in Mexico City,
with its matchless quintet of superton specimens, lapsed into complete
disuse and suffered severe losses. The California Academy of Sciences
possessed a considerable collection, but no one attending it apparently had
been able to label correctly some of the specimens after the disruption of
the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. During the thirties I recog-
nized one of the collection's principal specimens as marked incorrectly,
and found the almost complete mass of the Oroville iron lacking a label.
Harvard still possessed a magnificent collection but was not engaged
actively in the study of meteorites. Yale had a large collection, but Dr.
Ford told me that it had received no serious attention since about 1890.
Amherst College possessed one of the half dozen finest collections of the
time, but no attention had been devoted to it since the passing of Professor
C. U. Shepard in 1888. Dr. Winchell of the University of Minnesota at
one time had been active in collecting but had allowed other matters to
absorb his entire attention. Dr. Hobbs of the University of Michigan had
a keen interest in meteorites but most of his time was consumed by other
concerns.
Western Reserve University, Columbia University, Wesleyan Univer-
sity, the University of Minnesota, the University of Iowa, the University
of Nebraska, the State Museum of North Carolina, Tufts College, Drake
University, the University of Wisconsin, Rutgers University—these and
a few other institutions of higher learning had collections worthy of men-
tion, but none were receiving attention.
For many years the meteorite collection at the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago was the largest in the world. Oliver Farrington always
was glad to assist me in obtaining the kinds of samples I needed for my
lectures and to this end we made exchanges of portions of my finds on a
basis that seemed mutually advantageous. It still ranks among the best in
the world, but after Farrington's death in 1933 the growth of the collec-
tion slowed. The Field Museum disposed of a large collection of meteorite
casts, the chief remaining source of information as to the surface features
of the original specimens, which had been cut into slices. I acquired from
the Field Museum a ton of large irons from the Arizona crater in exchange
for a part of a small new find which I valued at about $500.
The market for Canyon Diablo meteorites at Winslow and Flagstaff,
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 59
Arizona, had completely died out in the thirties. On one occasion I pur-
chased several hundred pounds of small Canyon Diablo specimens for
Dean Gillespie at fifty cents a pound. Large masses were cheaper.
During this period a 400-pound specimen lay in the open between the
curb and sidewalk in front of a dwelling in Winslow, Arizona. Under a
sidewalk grating downtown lay three great masses, subject to regular
deposit of dust and trash. Officials of the bank under whose property they
lay were not very clear about their ownership. These meteorites were
rumored to weigh a ton, a half ton and 500 pounds respectively. Eventu-
ally I learned this was exaggeration. But the fact of their neglect is indica-
tive of the casualness with which the subject of meteorites was approached.
After persistent inquiry I learned that these meteorites belonged to the
Barringer estate, and was given permission to exhibit them in the natural
history museum in Denver. We weighed them and found their true
weights to be 1,406 pounds, 570 and 160 pounds respectively.
Farrington had reported that the Academy of Science at St. Louis pos-
sessed specimens of more than forty meteorite falls, but a few years later
the collection was stored, and when I went to see it in the late twenties
I was told that it had largely disappeared. I was informed that another
institution's collection of some ninety-odd falls met with much the same
fate.
There had been a good deal of interest in meteorites from the first
acceptance of their space origin until the century turned. In the early years
there had been voluminous writings.
The prolific writers of the nineteenth century had been C. U. Shepard
(1827-1888) and J. L. Smith (1854-1884). The next great names in the
field of meteorites were Merrill and Farrington. Besides these two, Dr.
Charles Palache was a third scientist who was helpful to me in the first
years of my interest. He had charge of the important collection of meteor-
ites in the mineralogical museum of Harvard University during the twen-
ties and early thirties. Meteorites never were Palache's chief interest or
responsibility; but he contributed importantly to the literature and I
turned to him on various occasions for information and for support by way
of purchase of my specimens.
In 1926 Dr. Palache cataloged the Harvard collection at 351 falls. The
list grew apace during the next decade and portions of many of my early
finds were added to it. Later much of this collection was retired for lack
of space. Activity in meteorite study at Harvard slowed down and so
remained for some years.
Dr. Charles P. Olivier included a very enlightening chapter on meteor-
ites in his masterful treatise, Meteors, in 1924, but his chief interest was in
the phenomena of meteors, their orbits and their relation to comets. He
privately confided to me, to my great disappointment, that when a meteor-
ite landed on the earth he lost interest in it.
60 FIND A FALLING STAR
During the middle and late twenties a number of young men began to
evidence interest in meteors and meteorites: Dr. C. C. Wylie of the
University of Iowa, Dr. F. C. Leonard of the University of California at
Los Angeles; O. E. Monnig of Texas; and Stuart H. Perry of Michigan.
But it seemed that quantitatively meteorites were considered to have no
meaning. The meteorite market was based upon the belief that after a
meteorite had been described its value lay in its being listed in the catalogs
of those institutions which took pride in the number of falls represented
in their collections, or in its exhibit value if it possessed features of suffi-
cient interest to warrant display.
The fading of scientific interest in meteorites, the deterioration of col-
lections and the general lack of recognition of the quantitative significance
of meteorites seemed to be related. The great collections of meteorites
that existed all had been accumulated gradually through acquisition of
accidental finds over long periods of time. Yale's collection had begun
with the stones of the historic Weston, Connecticut, fall of 1807. Am-
herst's began soon after. The United States National Museum collection
was benefited by gifts from various individuals. Ward's Natural Science
Establishment was the most available market for any meteorite found, but
the bulk of Ward's material was obtained through purchases of collections
that themselves had been accumulated slowly. Harvard, American Mu-
seum, Field Museum, all had built their collections through purchases of
old, established accumulations.
The Nininger Collection was unique in that it was being established
mainly by means of a planned search for specimens which would be added
or which would provide means of exchange for others to be acquired.
In about 1930 when I was beginning to build the base for my collection,
Ward's was offering the remnant of the Rochester University collection
at ridiculously low prices, due to the general disinterest in meteorites. The
fate of this Rochester collection furnishes a good clue to the failure of the
study of meteorites to catch on. Rochester University—which happened
to be located in the same city as Ward's Natural Science Establishment—
had not really taken the study of meteorites seriously. By exchange of a
portion of one of my early finds and by borrowing some money I was able
to acquire several very fine meteorites of the Rochester group at a small
fraction of the prices at which specimens of the same falls had sold previ-
ously. I had taken pains to learn that only four and in some cases five
institutions in the United States had samples of these falls in their collec-
tions. No one seemed to think there would be any need for more of these
meteorites than those few institutions then possessed. The meteorites had
been described; the specimens held were sufficient for exhibit. What more
did anyone want? In this single instance I acquired approximately forty-
two pounds of the Gilgoin, Australia, stone; thirty-one pounds of the
Estacado, Texas, stone; and thirty-three pounds of the McKinney, Texas,
PEAKS AND VALLEYS 61
5. ON VARIOUS TRAILS
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, while on a truck delivery during the spring of
1932, I stopped for a brief visit to the anthropological museum there,
intending to inquire about a small meteorite that recently had been found
in a pottery vessel in an ancient ruin. I parked my truck in the lot and went
in.
As I was passing among the exhibits, quite unexpectedly I met Dr.
Alexander Wetmore, director of the United States National Museum,
who happened to be in Santa Fe on a one-day visit. On a bench outside
the building Dr. Wetmore and I sat and visited, turning our talk to
meteorites. When he asked how our work was going, I grinned and waved
at my truck parked nearby. On the spot he offered a tentative arrangement
for some field work the following summer in the northwest part of the
country on behalf of the National Museum.
We made vacation arrangements for the children, and Addie and I
undertook several projects, including an investigation into the Port Or-
ford, Oregon, meteorite story.
The Port Orford case is an enigma. This famous pallasite has never been
rediscovered since it was seen first in 1859 by Dr. John Evans, a govern-
ment geologist, who reported that he detached a small sample from a
parent mass estimated at 22,000 pounds, but died before actually mapping
the site. We, like other searchers, found no trace of it.
Some scientists became convinced the great mass never existed, that the
sample collected represented only a small mass and that Dr. Evans had
become confused in his memory as to where he had obtained it. To me
it appears unlikely that a geologist could detach a piece of pallasite from
any parent mass without holding in his mind a very reliable picture of the
source of the fragment. Field experience has prepared me to understand
just how plausible it is that such a great meteorite could exist, just as
described, and yet remain unfound. Indeed, I should be greatly surprised
if it is ever rediscovered though I feel very sure it exists.
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 63
Meteorites are where you find them. People often suggest searching for
meteorites in areas where rocks are abundant, but usually I shun such
places, because in an area where rocks lie everywhere hunters will become
confused and will tire of looking at every stone. If there is only an occa-
sional rock, a searcher is much more apt to take a second glance to see if
it might be a meteorite.
A daylight meteorite fell near Archie, Missouri, on August 10, 1932,
while Addie and I were in the northwest. Some time after our return home
I wrote to the National Museum proposing that we cooperate in field work
in the Archie area. I suggested that the museum advance cash to cover my
expenses and in return receive specimens to cover its outlay, the findings
of the survey to be written as a joint report. The museum offered rather
to buy $200 worth of meteorites, if I could find them. This plan made it
necessary for me to work on borrowed money, but it also left me free to
do as I chose with my time.
During the couple of weeks that I spent at Archie, some fifty miles south
of Kansas City, interviewing witnesses to the afternoon fireball, I drove
regularly to and from the town of Harrisonville about ten miles north of
the site of the fall, and noticed that about midway of that distance there
lay a group of nicely cleared farms in the usually timbered country, with
no rocks anywhere in sight.
One day, finding myself with some spare time, I decided to do some
work in this rockless area, on my assumption that meteorites fall one place
as well as another. I interviewed farmers, carrying with me some small
meteorites for illustration, and suggested the likelihood there were some
meteorites in the community, adding that a fair price would be offered for
any that might be found.
After spending two or three hours with a dozen different farmers I
drove back to Archie.
Two days later the wife of the first farmer I had talked with came to see
me, bringing a meteorite.
"Is this what you were talking about?"
"It sure is. Where did you get it?"
"Right after you left our house my husband told me he knew he had
64 FIND A FALLING STAR
He explained that he knew some of the "wise guys" would ridicule and
make a public spectacle of him. N o w he was willing to tell what had
happened. He said he was down along the creek, about three-fourths of
a mile west of his home, hunting squirrels among some rather large trees,
when suddenly he heard what he thought at first was the firing of a
shotgun, except that it seemed too loud. This sound soon was followed
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 65
by another and then a rather disturbing roar. Then Bill heard a noise like
buckshot striking the leaves and branches of the trees above him. His
thought was that someone was playing a prank, and he considered it a
pretty hazardous joke.
"I was frightened and started for home, and about that time something
struck in the water of the creek a few feet away."
He said the splash was like that of a rock the size of a man's fist. A boy
of his age and this place would be familiar with the splashes made by fish,
frogs and turtles as well as by stones; it was safe to assume that he had
heard one of the stones which had fallen, of which several had been
recovered near where he had heard these sounds.
When Bill reached home he learned that his father had observed the
fireball and "smoke trail" of the meteorite. His father also had heard
sounds like those the boy heard, and he had felt a showering of small
"gravel" on his hat and shirt. The youth's sister, eight years old, had come
from the opposite side of the house where she had been playing, fright-
ened and half in tears.
"Daddy, it's raining rocks out here!" she had cried.
The fact that the showering of small particles had been heard or felt
by three members of this family, in two locations three fourths of a mile
apart, became more significant when it was matched with the testimony
of a dozen neighbors who had been enjoying a watermelon feed under
a tree at a farm a few miles away. All had heard what sounded like hail
pattering on the shoulder-high corn in an adjacent field. These three
occurrences of showering gravel followed shortly after the detonations
from the meteor, and the locations were in a straight line extending a
distance of six miles. Another report of a small stone striking the side of
a house about a half mile to the south of this line also sounded entirely
plausible.
This sprinkled area lay under the projected path of the fireball and was
between the point above which the final burst had occurred and the area
where seven stones, totaling eleven and a half pounds, were recovered.
A little calculation based upon even the meager facts that were submit-
ted indicated that the collected stones from this fall were a mere bagatelle
compared to the tonnage that must have rained down in the area. By our
efforts, the seventh recovered stone was located, but we were unable to
recover a single grain of fine material. Our information was obtained four
months after the fall. The area was heavily vegetated and had been sub-
jected to severe rains.
Several times I have "just missed" being a witness to one of the awe-
some sky spectacles that have sent me searching for earthly remains of
"visitors from space." O n e instance was the Pasamonte, New Mexico,
fireball of March 24, 1933, a meteor that was unusual in many respects,
66 FIND A FALLING STAR
as were also the stones that months later were recovered along the path
of its flight.
With my son Bob, then fourteen, I had gone to the town of Clovis, New
Mexico, to obtain a meteorite that had turned up in response to some
stories the local newspaper editor ran in his paper for me. I was awake,
restless, at 5:00 A . M . , and kept peering from the north window of our
tourist camp cottage, looking at nothing. Clouds obscured the Clovis sky,
but, perhaps by some vague abnormalcy, they conveyed a hint of the
astounding phenomenon that was occurring behind their curtain. For
while I stared recurrently from the window, Charlie Brown, a cowboy, at
breakfast 200 miles to the north near Clayton, New Mexico, was making
meteoritic and photographic history.
Charlie noted that the clock was striking five just as he sat at the break-
fast table. At that moment the sky lighted up with noontime brilliance.
With astounding quickness of mind and hand he snatched up a little pocket
camera, unfolded it as he ran outside, pointed it toward a great, advancing
ball of fire and snapped the shutter. When he glanced up again, the meteor
was disappearing over the housetop.
What he had seen, that I would have given much to see, was one of the
greatest of modern meteorite falls. It was weeks later before I knew of
Charlie Brown's picture.
That was the nature of most of my meteorite searches. Many were total
duds. Many more brought only "delayed action" results. Others would
take a sort of "one thing leads to another" course so that an initially small
find, or slight lead, might snowball into something big. The last was the
case with Pasamonte. By luck, Bob and I had been—almost—in the right
place at the right time. Before we finished our investigation we received
unprecedented sketches and photographs of the accompanying luminous
dust cloud, as well as the phenomenal Brown photo, and a number of
specimens of a rare kind of stony meteorite. In the meantime, a number
of specimens were destroyed through ignorance and out of our poor luck
in not getting to the right places fast enough.
From Clovis Bob and I drove to a farm near Melrose, twenty-five miles
west, to obtain the meteorite we had come to purchase. The farmer told
us he had plowed up the meteorite long before and thrown it into a ditch
to save his plow. Years afterward he needed a weight for his go-devil, an
implement used to cultivate row crops, and remembered the heavy stone.
He had been using the sixty-eight-pound meteorite on the go-devil ever
since.
As we paid him, he said he wondered if "that thing might have come
out of one of those falling stars, like the one I saw this morning."
He described the fireball he had seen. I thought perhaps the sale of his
stone had exaggerated his interest in an ordinary meteor. When we got
back to the little village of Melrose we parked in front of the tiny cafe,
Collecting meteorites from Haviland crater.
A section through a portion of the meteorite horizon of the Haviland crater, showing
meteorites in place (painted white).
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 67
opened the car door so the meteorite could be seen lying on the floor
between the seats, and I started conversation with some men standing
nearby.
Did they know anything about meteorites? Pretty soon one of the men
spoke up, "I saw one this morning."
As others added their stories it became evident that a spectacular fireball
had crossed the northern sky. After I made some notes on their observa-
tions, Bob and I drove on west, then north, stopping wherever there was
a settlement. We asked about size, appearance and direction of travel of
the fireball and drove accordingly, until eventually we had circled the end
point—the point where the light went out—and now the reports began
to describe the fireball as being in the opposite direction.
Descriptions varied. The meteor was as big as the moon. As big as a
baseball. It was an advancing wedge of flame. It was a whirling ball. There
were two fireballs, three, a half dozen.
In observations on direction and altitude I have found lay judgments
cannot be depended upon as accurate within limits of less than thirty
degrees, but I have sometimes interviewed professional geologists and
physics teachers who did no better. Even inexpert accounts can provide
the basis to determine whether a meteor passed on one side or the other
of a certain point, and for calculating the limits of visibility and the vanish-
ing point.
For two days Bob and I searched out eyewitnesses to the Pasamonte
fireball, driving ahead as indicated, and established the approximate land-
ing area. Meanwhile press reports placed the landing in five different
states. A Denver newspaper caught up with me by telephone, queried me,
and then ran a story and picture of the "meteorite," reportedly "found"
in Brighton, Colorado, some 300 miles north of the area in New Mexico
where the paper chided me for still hunting it!
Over a period of four months, intermittently, I interviewed witnesses
in many towns of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma.
The spectacular display was plaintly visible even from points as remote
from one another as Cheyenne, Wyoming, and El Paso, Texas.
Ultimately it became evident that the phenomenon was more spectacu-
lar than even the most dramatic accounts by witnesses—the fireball actu-
ally was cubic miles of incandescence, accompanied on its fifteen- to
twenty-second flight by a discharge of material which produced a visible
column of dust a mile in diameter and lasting ninety minutes or longer.
Aerial disturbances shook buildings and rattled windows as far as nine-
ty-five miles to either side of the course. In the vicinity of the end of the
visible flight, many residents insisted they had suffered throughout the
entire day following the fall from a throat irritation like nothing they had
experienced previously or since.
It was some months later before I was able to continue with the fireball
68 FIND A FALLING STAR
a piece of tissue paper and when we encountered him much later, the
specimen was still fresh and unspoiled. It weighed an ounce.
It was nine months after the event before finally I held in my hand at
the Pasamonte ranch a fragment of the aerolitical stone—the meteorite—
that had caused the great spectacle of light, the turbulence, the dust cloud,
the fright of shaken witnesses, of March 24, 1933. The material was almost
like volcanic ash beneath the outer fusion crust, so friable that in all
probability no large mass landed anywhere intact. All the recovered speci-
mens together weighed a little less than eight pounds. Pasamonte is of the
rare type of stony meteorite known as Howardite, and portions of the scant
material recovered from this spectacular New Mexico fall have found their
way to museums all over the world.
On my several trips into the Pasamonte area, I made it a point to instruct
all of the ranch hands on recognizing both fresh and weathered meteorites
in the field, for the very good reason that I was sure other falls had
occurred during centuries past in the same area.
On one occasion as I drove into the ranch headquarters and turned to
park in front of the little company store, I noticed a fist-size stone just
inside the gate which appeared to be a fragment of an old stony meteorite.
A second piece lay near by. After parking I went back and examined the
two pieces. They were both meteoritic. I took them into the ranch office
and asked the manager if he knew where the fragments came from. He
told me that Fidel Lanfor had brought them in.
After talking with the various ranch hands I drove to Lanfor's farm.
There, lying in his yard, was a considerable pile of fragments like those
I had picked up in the ranch yard. Fidel told me he had found a "big rock"
in his field and thought it might have some diamonds or gold in it, so he
took a sledge and broke it up.
"But you didn't find anything of value in it, did you?" I asked.
" N o , " he said.
"But you knocked about a hundred dollars out of it," I told him.
Charles M. Brown, whose snapshot of the fireball in motion made
scientific history, was manager of the Lyon cattle ranch, situated in a
narrow valley about twenty-five miles southwest of Clayton, New Mexico.
For several weeks after the meteor I was in the field almost steadily. On
May 16, Director Figgins of the museum in Denver wrote to Charles
Brown, having received word that Brown had photographed the smoke
cloud left by the March 24 meteor. Mr. Brown replied under the date of
May 20 that his picture of the smoke cloud "would be of no special benefit
to you as it is a very poor print," etc., but "I do have an excellent picture
of the meteor in flight which I was very fortunate in getting, which shows
very plainly actions of the meteor which you could not see with the eye.
. . . Some time ago I wrote to Mr. Ninninger (sic) to call on me, that I
thought I could possibly help him in determining which way this meteor
70 FIND A FALLING STAR
went. . . . I would be glad to give you any information I can on this meteor
at any time."
The letter he mentions never reached me. Neither Dr. Figgins nor I
could understand how he possibly could have gotten a photo of the meteor
in flight, but we agreed that the photograph should be examined.
When I arrived at the Lyon ranch near Mt. Dora, New Mexico, Brown
was not in. I explained my errand to Mrs. Brown, adding that it was
difficult to comprehend how such a feat as a photograph of a meteor in
flight could have been accomplished.
If I knew Charlie, Mrs. Brown told me, I would understand. " H e always
does things that way, on the spur of the moment, never stops to figure or
discuss; just goes ahead and does it."
Charlie Brown's photograph is dominated by the great glowing ball of
the meteor, just at the point of emitting one of its periodic incandescent
flares, streaming a luminous tail behind it.
Charlie told me that he habitually kept his camera on a radio cabinet
near his chair at the breakfast table. He described matter-of-factly how the
unearthly light turned everything into mid-day, and he had simply
grabbed the Kodak and dashed outside, opening it as he ran, pointed it
and snapped the shutter. Then he wound the film and tried for another
shot, but the second one was not good; he believed the light was too
intense after bursting of the big fireball.
I had him re-enact the scene for me, timing him carefully. The entire
sequence required eight-and-a-half seconds, an interval that was consistent
with other reports that the fireball was visible for fifteen to twenty-two
seconds. Consequently, for a Charlie Brown, it had been no difficult feat.
As quick as Charlie was on the trigger in taking his historic snapshot,
the film lay in the photo shop for weeks before being developed. Two
processors declined to print it, seeing nothing worth printing.
The meteorite which the farmer near Melrose had used on his go-devil
and which had taken us to the area at the time of the Pasamonte fireball,
is interesting and unusual in its own right. It is a gold-bearing aerolite—
that is, a stony meteorite containing bits of gold.
Some weeks before the March 24 fireball, I had been in western Texas
on another search. Hunting had not been good and I turned home,
through New Mexico. As I approached Clovis, then a small village, I was
impressed by the miles of almost level country, relatively free of vegeta-
tion and with no rocks in sight. I drove on into the town and since it was
Saturday and the schools would not be open I headed immediately for the
local newspaper office. There I met Pete Anderson, editor of the Curry
County News. The walls of his office displayed a number of Indian relics.
After admiring his collection, I asked Anderson if he had ever run onto
any meteorites during his field trips.
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 71
"I'm afraid I wouldn't know one if I saw it. I always thought I'd like
to find one, though."
I pulled some samples from the little bag I carried, tossed them on his
desk and began to explain the differences between meteorites and ordi-
nary rocks. I suggested that he write a story for his paper, explaining how
to recognize meteorites, telling the farmers of the area that there might
be a meteorite or so among the rocks they probably had been throwing
from their fields into ditches and fence corners for years, and relaying an
offer from me to buy any that were found.
Pete wrote a very good story. His paper went out on Thursday and on
Saturday Guy Groves brought in his go-devil "weight." Pete promptly
forwarded a sample. I sent a check and arranged to pick up the stone on
a future trip, the trip which coincided with the Pasamonte fall.
The news that Mr. Groves had sold a rock that had been knocking
around the place for years was the occasion for another newspaper story.
More meteorites showed up.
When I asked my chemist, the late Mr. Fred G. Hawley, to analyze the
Melrose stone, he discovered a trace of gold in the meteorite.
Hawley was chief chemist for the Inspiration mine and smelter of Ana-
conda Copper Company at Miami, Arizona. I had met him during a trip
which Addie and I took with the children in 1925-26 and began at that
time sending my meteorite samples to him for analysis.
Fred Hawley was extremely cautious. He wrote me in detail of the
chemical test he made on a sample of the Melrose meteorite.
"If I am correct this is surprising, for I understand that Au (gold) has
rarely, if ever, been found in meteorites. . . . I think I am right about the
presence of Au; but before certifying it I should like to make two more
tests by fire and run them a little differently to separate the gold, if you
will send me more material.
"If I find gold is really present I think you should have some other
chemist, experienced in this work, check my results so as to leave no doubt
in the minds of other scientists regarding its correctness."
Mr. Hawley's further tests agreed with his original finding, and his
determination was confirmed by assays by the American Smelting and
Refining Company in Denver.
Fred Hawley need not have been so modest. When Dr. Harrison
Brown carried out a program of re-checking old meteorite analysis during
the 1940's, using the newest methods, he stated that those made by F. G.
Hawley were among the very best.
When I published a scientific description of the Melrose stone, a prob-
lem arose. As a gold-bearing meteorite, it made headlines in newspapers
all over the world. Some news men made it sound as though my meteorite
hunting had the objective of acquiring precious metals, and finders of
meteorites began demanding high prices. Worse still, some fine specimens
72 FIND A FALLING STAR
2
Before any specimens had been recovered from the famous Pasamonte
fall, westerners were treated to another great fireball. This was the August
1933 daylight meteor of Sioux County in northwestern Nebraska, which
created a disturbance all over that part of the state. Detonations were
heard over a distance of 150 miles; within the central fifty miles of this
area cattle stampeded, horses ran away, farmers were startled into falling
from their machines in the fields; wild pheasants were set into outcry.
Yet the stones recovered from this fall totaled only about thirty, an
aggregate of six pounds, the largest of which weighed three pounds.
How could such grand pyrotechnical displays occur without leaving
some great memorial in the form of masses of stone or iron? The Sioux
County fireball, like those of Archie, Missouri, and Pasamonte, New
Mexico, added to my growing conviction that the dust clouds so often
reported to accompany fireballs carry a great share of the disintegrated
meteorite and that in many cases no great mass survives.
I first heard of the Sioux County fireball when the phone rang at our
home in Denver at about 10:20 on the morning of August 8, 1933. The
caller was my nephew, Edgar Nininger, who was working on a farm that
summer about four miles east of the city.
"I just saw a great meteor," he told me. He said he had been riding his
horse from one field to another when a streak of fire appeared in the clear,
cloudless sky, descending almost verically until it was cut off from view
by an intervening haystack.
At once I drove out to check with Ed. He had marked the exact spot
from which he had seen the streak of fire, and the haystack was a good
landmark. I set up a forester's compass and noted direction and elevation
according to his observation: about fifteen degrees east of due north, the
almost vertical descent bearing just slightly to the westward. Ed judged
the fireball was visible about two seconds.
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 73
I returned home. Addie already had packed our grips and a lunch for
us. I obtained from the press services and newspapers the reports they had
received, and we got into the car and headed north.
The nearly vertical descent, as Edgar had witnessed it, gave no indica-
tion of whether the fireball was moving toward or away from him. We
never drove directly toward our objective, but to one side or the other,
in order to obtain reports from observers who could give us directional
information, modifying our route as we progressed. We knew this fireball
had been witnessed farther north, so we drove fifty-five miles north to
Greeley, where the local editor gave me the names of witnesses.
We contacted them. Each observer was requested to stand in the spot
from which he viewed the fireball and describe its appearance, whereupon
I took notes and compass bearings on the vanishing point of the fireball
as it was seen by each. Reports in the Greeley area were not noticeably
different from Edgar's account, indicating the object must have been a
considerable distance away. Also, Edgar's report that the meteor was still
burning when it disappeared behind the haystack was a good indication
that it was still quite high and the landing place could be 150 to 250 miles
off.
Locating the end point is an important first step in the hunt for a newly
fallen meteorite. If the fireball appears to reach the horizon the meteorite
probably has traveled many miles beyond the point of disappearance; if
the light has been seen to go out high above the earth it can be presumed
that the surviving fragments have not traveled very much farther onward
from that spot.
Paradoxically, to the observer the reverse seems to be true; the light that
disappears "behind the haystack" or "just back of the barn" or "on the
other side of the hill" is the one that convinces the untrained viewer that
the meteorite "fell right over there."
We continued northward from Greeley. At Cheyenne, Wyoming, sixty
miles farther, we interviewed observers again, and then went on to Tor-
rington, another eighty-seven miles north. Here the reports indicated a
vanishing point considerably more to the east; also witnesses said the
fireball had disappeared while yet well up in the sky. This indicated to
them that the meteorite had burned up before reaching earth; to us it
meant simply that it had quit burning.
' We stayed overnight at Torrington, taking a number of bearings with
the help of various witnesses, and next morning we drove eighty-three
miles farther north, to Lusk.
At Lusk, observers pointed southeast instead of northeast, indicating we
had passed beyond the end point of the fireball. We turned east into
Nebraska, stopping at each town until we reached Crawford, where ob-
servers pointed almost due south. A little farther, at Chadron, witnesses
reported the fireball had disappeared in a due southwesterly direction.
74 FIND A FALLING STAR
Now we turned south and kept on in that direction until observers began
to point north of west. Here, we knew, we had just about encircled the
end point of the fireball. Now we were ready to plot the course of flight
and to indicate the general area in which surviving fragments would have
landed.
Our preliminary survey covered the whole west half of Nebraska, parts
of eastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and northwestern Kansas.
We determined that the course of the meteor was fifteen degrees west of
north and that it had vanished at a point over the Niobrara river, half way
between Agate and Marsland, Nebraska. Its descent was at an angle of
about 30° with the horizontal, and it had disappeared about eight and
one-half miles above the ground. On the basis of these known facts and
probable velocity and other contributing factors, I had to estimate how far
ahead of the point where the light had disappeared the landing place
should be expected.
Three witnesses in Denver reported the object as "a mile or more
northeast." A Colorado supreme court justice, viewing the fireball from
Estes Park, was sure it had fallen in nearby Devil's Gulch. A newspaper
editor in Berthoud, Colorado, relayed positive assertions that the object
had fallen in a field five miles east and two miles north of that town—
nowhere near the ultimate recovery site—and warned me not to bring any
great number of persons to help in the search, for the owners of the field
did not want "a lot of people tramping over their land." A motorist
driving west from Gothenberg, Nebraska, was just as certain the meteor-
ite had fallen in the hills near that town. And a salesman on the road fifty
miles southeast of Denver—more than two hundred miles from where the
meteorite actually struck—was so certain it had fallen in a field next to the
highway that he made two trips back from Denver to search the pasture
land adjoining the strip of road where he had been driving. Fishermen
near Elk Mountain, Wyoming, spent several hours searching for the object
they had "seen" fall in the hills "nearby."
What each of these witnesses possessed that was useful to the hunter of
the meteorite was the observation hardest to extract from them: an accu-
rate report of the direction the fireball was in relation to where they stood
when it vanished. They all were so eager to help that they wanted to
provide the exact location where the meteorite landed, instead of the
simple directional reports that could help to establish the fact.
By taking the varying observations and plotting them against each
other, knowing the distance between the observations, it was possible to
bring together the angle of descent and the horizontal path of passing and
come up with a pretty good idea of the spot on earth toward which the
meteor was headed. Then we marked off half* of the distance from the
*This might be more or less than half, depending on air currents, angle of descent, height
at burn-out and other factors of the particular instance.
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 75
point of the fireball's disappearance back to this spot to allow for further
flight after burn-out, and drew an ellipse with this as the long axis.
I sat in the car on the Nebraska prairie, with map, ruler, protractor,
pencil and paper, and plotted a space some fifteen miles long by about ten
wide, over some part of which I figured the fragments of the meteorite
were scattered. Then we went into the area enclosed by our ellipse and
canvassed it house to house, talking to the residents, showing them a
freshly fallen meteorite so they would know what to hunt. This survey and
search were continued through more than a year.
When fragments eventually were recovered, they were found within
the northwest quadrant of the target area I had drawn.
The first fragment found was picked up in a potato field, where two farm
boys named Yohe were hoeing, at the same time teasing the hired hand
working with them. The light of the meteor startled all three and the
following detonation frightened them; that evening the hired man com-
plained to the parents that the boys had thrown a rock at him. The boys
denied this charge, and it was suggested that perhaps it was the "thing in
the sky" that had nearly struck him. The next day, working the same field,
Homer Yohe picked up a stone with a shiny, glazed black surface that later
was identified as a meteorite.
Again and again we returned to the ellipse we had plotted and endeav-
ored to contact every inhabitant.
One man I remember particularly well.
" N o , it didn't fall here," he told me. "I saw it. It fell way south, maybe
fifty miles. A team ran away with a binder down there. You're in the
wrong spot."
I explained to him I had heard about the runaway team, but that it is
a known fact that a big fireball will frighten horses, cattle, even human
beings all along its course and far to either side of it. He was not to be
convinced that the meteorite had fallen in his own locality, but finally after
long protest he agreed to watch as he herded sheep. A week later he sent
me a little meteorite, one of the finest specimens I ever obtained, found
right on his own farm.
The north curve of our ellipse lay in sand hills where auto travel was
difficult and treacherous in 1933, and I reached that northern point only
once. It was late in the day when I made my last stop and I asked if there
were any other farms nearby to the north. There was just one more house,
about a half mile farther into the sand hills, on a road that was scarcely
passable for my car. My informant agreed to relay word of my search to
his neighbor, but evidently he never did.
More than a year later this unvisited neighbor picked up the largest
fragment recovered from the Sioux County fall and he took it to the stock
corral on the railroad where the cattle were being loaded and passed it
about for all the cowhands to see. With their knives they chipped about
76 FIND A FALLING STAR
half of the nice fusion crust away and finally one broke the stone in half
with a hammer. It was in bad shape when it finally reached me, but
obviously it had once been a fine specimen, probably equal in weight to
all the other fragments recovered.
3
Problems of interpreting fireball reports had plagued us ever since the
1923 fireball. In that case each of two farmers living 300 miles apart and
in opposite directions from McPherson insisted the fiery object had landed
in his own field, while my own observation placed the location of fall far
from both of them. The largest distance ever recorded between fragments
of the same meteorite is about twenty-eight miles, although there have
been cases where news dispatches have reported a fireball has "fallen" at
localities as far as 600 miles apart.
The public nearly always was willing and anxious to help. There were
many futile searches, but the wild goose chases were governed by the
natural law of averages, not by malice. Natural mistakes were to be ex-
pected. All I really asked was that anyone volunteering information simply
tell me what he knew, or thought he knew. Humorous incidents often
accompanied my putting of two and two together. Measuring and utilizing
the myriad untrained observations of witnesses was endlessly interesting.
Ignorance of the true behavior of meteors was widespread. People just
would not be convinced that meteorites cease burning several miles above
the soil. Therefore when the fire-streak is "traced to the ground" the real
fact is the object was so far away that at a height of several miles it still
passed over the observer's horizon. Excepted would be the large crater-
forming meteorites which would be destructive over an area fifty miles
around the fall.
There is no mystery as to why the light of a meteor disappears at several
miles above the soil. The only reason for the light is friction with the
atmosphere due to the extremely high speed of the incoming meteorite.
Friction causes a slowing down, and when the meteorite has been slowed
down to about the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet the friction is no
longer sufficient to produce burning. The light fades out and the meteorite
continues on its way to the earth. If it is farther than a few miles from the
observer it is invisible. If a fireball vanishes at a height of ten miles then
it may be anywhere from fifteen to thirty miles from its target depending
on what has been its angle of approach.
The illusion of the distant fireball's seeming to reach the ground nearby
is almost universal. In the vicinity where the stones actually fall the oppo-
site illusion often obtains. Because the burning ceases and the fireball
disappears high in the sky, observers are very apt to argue that "it was all
burned u p . "
ON VARIOUS TRAILS 77
location. The "smoke" was the dust trail left by the meteorite. This dust
cloud, which had been seen by all observers, lay at a height of eight to
twenty miles and for him its lower end was behind the horizon. He had
given me an accurate report as to direction, but he was 150 miles off in
his judgment. His was not an uncommon error. A professional astronomer
once admitted to me that he had raced off in his car to where the dust trail
of a meteor seemed to reach the ground near him. Another astronomer
told me how, at the turn of the century, he had chased such a phenomenon
on his bicycle; he gave up after twenty miles when witnesses at that
distance told just the same story as did those at his home base.
We learned never to decide on the directional path of a fireball until
we had interviewed witnesses on at least three sides of the end point or
had been fortunate enough to find someone who had seen it pass directly
overhead, and we also learned to establish certain units of approximate
measurement to aid the descriptions by witnesses on occasions when in-
struments were not available. Thus we might gauge size and distance
against a hand held at arm's length, the width of the palm, thickness of
fingers, size of a lead pencil at arm's length, or some other such homely
example. Sometimes it was possible to establish very good lines by measur-
ing the distance and height of buildings and trees standing between the
viewer and the fireball.
Additional information could be gained if the meteor left a trail, or if
a puff of cloud formed. A good way to learn the elevation in degrees of
the point where the dust cloud appeared, if there were no instruments
available, was to record in feet the height on some building past which the
observer looked, and then measure the distance to the building from the
observer. Another way was to have the witness draw a line representing
the trail of dust with reference to the horizon.
In a restaurant in northwestern Nebraska, I was engaged in a discussion
about meteorites with a companion when a third party overheard and
volunteered he could tell me "exactly" where I could find one.
As he was leaving town one morning early, he recounted, a tremendous
ball of fire came streaming in just over the hill from the south. He said
he saw it burn for some time after it struck the top of the hill less than a
half mile from him. He would walk with me to the spot. Parts of his story
rang a bell. I asked him if he could recall the date of the event. His wife,
who so far had sat silently, spoke.
"I can tell you the exact date. It was the day we were going to my sister's
birthday party, March 24, last year."
"Was it about five o'clock in the morning?" I asked.
She agreed that was about the right time. The phenomenon her husband
had described was the great fireball of March 24, 1933, whose landing
place was northeastern New Mexico. This meteor had quit burning at a
height of seventeen miles above the earth. Instead of "striking" the top
80 FIND A FALLING STAR
of the hill as the Nebraska couple had believed, the light was simply
passing behind it, still at an altitude of some twenty miles from the ground.
When I had passed through the territory of Pasamonte, New Mexico,
just a day before the fireball on my errand to gather up the Melrose
meteorite, some local citizens accused me of having purposely stationed
myself in the vicinity to be present when the thing arrived. Why else
would I have been so far away from home and in this particular area?
The Pasamonte fireball produced typical examples of the fright and
confusion often associated with the passage of a great meteor.
Sim Cally, a veteran rancher who had spent most of his sixty-five years
on the New Mexico and Texas plains, had moved with his men to a new
sheep camp the evening before. As usual, he was getting up at five o'clock
to start the day when a blinding light and horrible roar startled him. Their
camp was in a canyon and when he saw that ball of fire come into view
over the canyon wall, he told me he thought the whole earth was burning
up.
"I yelled to the boys, 'It's the end of the world! It's all over now!' "
The fireball passed about seventy-five miles from him and at a height
of about twenty miles.
Another rancher 200 miles farther from the meteor's course reported
that it killed several of his cattle. In reality, their deaths were due to
lightning striking the wire fence against which they had huddled during
a storm.
Scores of early risers who saw the Pasamonte spectacle picked up odd
bits of stone which they had not noticed before and reported finding
fragments of the meteorite.
We learned to approximate all our judgments to take into account our
dependence on the memories of untrained witnesses, unprepared for the
phenomenon they viewed and unprepared to report it.
Every great scientific truth goes through
three stages. First, people say it conflicts
with the Bible. Next, they say it had been
discovered before. Lastly, they say they
always believed it.
Louis Agassiz
It remained for Mary Kimberly to prove they had value beyond their
daily uses.
When Mary had been a little girl in Iowa, her school class was escorted
by the teacher to the railroad station to view a great meteorite that was
being transported to an eastern museum. Mary, a perceptive child, never
forgot the experience nor the appearance of the meteorite.
Frank laughed at Mary's belief the stones had come from the sky. He
went back to his work. When he plowed he occasionally ran into a hunk
of iron rock that crumpled the share point, knocked the plow handles into
his ribs and inspired language far more colorful than he was used to
employ.
As Frank plowed the meteorites out of the ground, Mary dragged them
back to her pile. O n e day when she brought him his lunch in the field,
she saw he had dug out a particularly big one, weighing probably a
hundred and fifty pounds. They loaded it onto his wagon, but her young
husband, who was becoming increasingly disgusted with Mary's "crazy
notion," dumped it out later instead of taking it in from the field.
Mary was not one to let go an idea. She wrote to everybody she could
think of who might have knowledge of geology, asking that they examine
her collection. Finally, after a five-year campaign of letters, she reached
Dr. F. W. Cragen, a geologist at Washburn (Kansas) College, who agreed
to look at her iron stones. He was amazed and delighted at her hoard, and
on the spot paid her several hundred dollars for the better half of the
approximate ton of material she had gathered by that time.
That first big sale price was enough to buy a neighboring farm, and on
their new property the Kimberlys found more meteorites to sell. Other
scientists followed Dr. Cragen to the "Kansas Meteorite Farm," and the
market was brisk for a number of years. Frank took up the cause enthusias-
tically and would go about the neighborhood offering to buy up the iron
stones. He sold for $100 a meteorite he had used to plug a hole in a pig
fence. He was not so discerning as Mary, however, and sometimes paid
his price for a hunk of slag or a chunk of sulphide from a coal pile. He
went back to his field and hunted in vain for the heavy meteorite he had
dumped in dudgeon from his wagon. Years later, when he was an old man
and Mary an old lady, he told me how he hunted again and again for that
stone, but never found it. He would laugh at himself, and boast of Mary's
cleverness, and she would sit by, proud and glowing.
Frank had one story of his own acumen that he loved to tell. He said
that one of the first of the large meteorites to be found in the area had
been taken into Greensburg by a lawyer, a Mr. Davis, and placed on the
sidewalk just outside his law office door as a curiosity. This was prior to
recognition in the community of the true nature of the heavy stones.
Before Mrs. Kimberly had made her first sale she and Frank had tried
to persuade Davis to give Mary that "rock" to add to her collection. He
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 83
even refused $10 for it. The specimen weighed more than 200 pounds,
and after Mary had sold half her hoard to Dr. Cragen, while she and Frank
still were keeping the sale secret, Frank took $200 in five-dollar bills and
went to town, determined to buy the big stone.
"Mr. Davis, I want to buy that rock. What'll you take for it?"
Davis struck his courtroom pose, cleared his throat importantly and
replied in stentorian tones.
" N o w , Frank, I don't care particularly about selling that rock. I sort of
like it out there, but if you are determined to buy the thing, it's going to
cost you $ 5 0 . "
Frank reached for his roll of bills and peeled off ten of them, which
he placed in the lawyer's hand. Davis couldn't help seeing the bank
roll.
"Damn you! You were prepared to pay me a couple of hundred for it.
What's gotten into you, anyway?"
Frank proudly loaded the meteorite into his wagon and drove home.
Later he sold it for more than $200.
I developed a great respect and fondness for the Kimberlys, and when
writing my first book, Our Stone-Pelted Planet, in 1931 and 1932, I paid
several visits to their home in Haviland, taking notes for a chapter about
them and the "Kansas Meteorite Farm," which naturally was a story
mostly about Mary Kimberly. When I told her of this she was delighted
and proud, and she looked forward to seeing a copy of the book, which
was being published by Houghton-Mifflin.
Bringing out the book took longer than expected. Meanwhile, Mary
Kimberly, then in her eighties, was failing noticeably. In early 1933 I
received one or more cards in her shaky handwriting inquiring as to when
she could see "that book." I assured her the publishers had promised its
early arrival. In April of that year I made a lecture trip to the East, and
before I left, Addie and I agreed that if the book arrived before my return
she should send one immediately to Mrs. Kimberly with a note that I
would autograph it later. But the book was too late.
Addie rushed a copy in the mail to Mrs. Kimberly but received in return
a letter from Mary's daughter with the news that her mother had passed
away six days before.
In our meteorite laboratory in Denver I cut many fine specimens from
this Kansas fall, given the name of Brenham, after the nearest post office.
It belongs to the unusual pallasite class and is very beautiful, containing
greenish crystals called olivine surrounded by bright nickel-iron. The
olivine was nearly always fractured and discolored by oxide of iron due
to long exposure to weather after arriving on the earth, but in one instance
my cut revealed a perfectly beautiful crystal, transparent but of greenish
golden hue, which I determined to remove and have mounted in a ring
for my wife. Addie never had worn a ring, since before we left Kansas we
84 FIND A FALLING STAR
only a few rods apart. Playing a hunch, he loaded his machine on top of
his car and drove the 1,300 miles to the village of Trenton, Wisconsin.
There he arranged with the landowner to search and began sounding the
soil. Almost immediately he received a signal indicating the presence of
metal and dug out a 450-pound iron. A little more work and a second mass
of about the same size was recovered. With these two great specimens he
headed back to Kansas.
Various kinds of detecting devices have been used in scouting for
meteorites, particularly since the war with the easy availability of military
mine detectors, with varying degrees of success in the hands of various
persons. Stockwell, who combined his layman's interest with a practical
wizardry in the handling of electrical and electronic appliances, must
certainly be the most successful dowser for meteorites.
The first meteorite crater recognized by white men in the United States
was that one in Arizona previously mentioned. The pit began to be sus-
pected as of meteoritic origin in 1891 but was not given serious considera-
tion as such until 1903. Even then only a few scientists, led by a mining
engineer, Daniel Moreau Barringer, were willing to advocate seriously
that meteorite craters existed. The scientific world in general rejected the
idea, especially after the Barringer group had carried out an extensive and
expensive program of exploration in the crater without discovering the
great meteorite mass for which they were searching.
At the time of my beginning interest in meteorites in 1923 the general
opinion among geologists and astronomers was that the Arizona crater had
been produced by a gaseous volcanic explosion, a hypothesis advanced by
Dr. G. K. Gilbert of the United States Geological Survey in studies of
1892 and 1896.
The impact explanation was clung to, however, by some persons in
addition to the Barringer group, probably by a larger number than so
expressed themselves, because to do so would be to label themselves as
radicals.
Dr. Merrill had spent some time at the crater and leaned strongly to
the meteoritic hypothesis, but his mathematical reasoning and advice
convinced him that a meteorite of sufficient size to produce the crater
would of necessity explode on impact. Merrill sought in vain for evi-
dence of such an explosion in the form of "volatilization products" and
stated in 1908 that their absence constituted "the greatest difficulty in
accepting the meteoric hypothesis." Merrill had not moved from this
position as late as 1928 nor, so far as I know, at the time of his death in
1929.
Farrington wrote in 1915: "Complete proof of the (meteorite) hypothe-
sis would be obtained by finding within the crater above the undisturbed
sandstone a meteoric mass or many of them which would together approx-
86 FIND A FALLING STAR
tals exactly like those found in the pallasite meteorites that had been found
in this and neighboring fields during more than forty years.
Except for the olivine crystals they contained, these rounded rust-col-
ored lumps bore no resemblance to the meteorites that had proven such
a boon to the Kimberlys some thirty years before. Frank recognized the
significance of the olivine inclusions. He and Mary had found some oxi-
dized specimens on their farm. They never had been able to find a market
for them, however, so Frank attached no importance to my find in the
wallow.
I was elated at what I had found, but I tried not to show too much
interest, thinking it best not to give Frank any reason to get commercial
ideas concerning the possible contents of this little depression. He would
recognize that the "burnt" specimens, as he called them, had " n o value,"
but I didn't know what he might think of the possibilities in the depths
of the bowl if I gave him the idea of a meteorite crater.
I inquired whether he would be willing for me to excavate the wallow
and Frank indicated that if anything was to be done he would do it himself.
He said they had been trying to fill in the hole during the years of
cultivation, that it "used to be a lot deeper" and that in fact it had been
quite a water hole for the cattle when the field was a pasture; it had held
water for long periods after rains. If he had thought there were meteorites
in the hole he would have dug into it himself.
I explained to Frank that more important than any material that might
be found in the depression would be the information concerning the
manner in which it had been produced, but I did not press the matter of
further excavation for fear that he might undertake it himself and ruin an
unprecedented opportunity for securing data on the question of meteorite
craters. I conceived that these oxidized forms with their shell of oxides
containing remnants of a true pallasite might be scientifically more valua-
ble than unoxidized specimens. Besides, I wanted to ascertain the form of
the buried crater. If Frank were to do the excavating, I knew he would
go after a "big o n e " and ignore everything else. I secured his promise that
I should be present when and if he did any excavating.
Since I had been his only buyer of meteorites since about 1900, Frank
Kimberly could see no great urgency about tearing up a bit of his wheat
crop merely to satisfy his or my curiosity.
I returned home convinced that I had discovered a meteorite crater. F.
G. Hawley, the chemist, verified the meteoritic character of a specimen
I sent him for analysis. I wrote a paper for the McPherson College Bulletin
in which I described briefly the finding of this strange type of oxidized
meteorite, which I named meteorode, under and inside the rim of the
depression in the field, thus placing it on record but withholding the use
of the term meteorite crater, until I had opportunity to make a proper
excavation.
88 FIND A FALLING STAR
The specimens I had found in the crater looked so much like the
ordinary nodular masses known as "iron concretions" that I thought it
would be interesting to send some to professional geologists for identifica-
tion. Accordingly, I sent samples to four leading universities where the
subject of geology was prominent in the curriculum, simply requesting
that they be identified for me. The answers that came back were unani-
mous that my specimens were "ordinary concretions."
In 1932 I visited the Odessa, Texas, crater. Finding of this crater had
been announced by A. B. Bibbins in 1926, but its meteoritic origin was
held in even greater doubt than that of the Arizona crater.
When I saw what others had described as a "peculiar hole" on the high
plain within a mile and a half of one of our great national highways (U.S.
Route 80), I was thrilled. The great saucer-like depression was almost 600
feet in diameter, with a depth of about eighteen feet and a rim rising some
four feet above the level of the plain. I came away from this "question-
able" Texas crater with a 300-gram meteorite, a number of smaller ones
and with not the slightest doubt as to the crater's true origin.
In 1933 I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, southwestern division, under
the title, "Meteor Craters vs. Steam Blowouts." At the same meeting there
was read a paper written by L. J. Spencer of London describing the
Henbury meteorite craters of Australia.
By this time it had been four years since my Kansas discovery. I felt I
could wait no longer. I hurried home to the Colorado Museum of Natural
History and made such a plea to Director Figgins that he agreed to put
up the expense money if I could get permission from the landowners and
would give my time.
Excavation of the Haviland crater—the first such excavation in the
world—perhaps was the most significant event in the history of the Kansas
Meteorite Farm.
My son, Bob, then fourteen, was with me. Frank and Mary Kimberly
were dead, but the younger generations of Kimberlys, both adults and
youngsters, showed an active interest in plans to dig out the old "wallow."
Power machinery was not used as much on Kansas farms in 1933 as it
is today. We hired two teams of horses and two old-time road scrapers.
We made several careful cuts, excavating and examining the soil be-
tween each operation. The excavated crater was in the form of an elongate
bowl. The first cut yielded many meteorites ranging in size from that of
grape seeds to as much as fifteen pounds. Each was surrounded by a layer
of rust-colored sand or soil about one-fourth to one-half inch thick.
O u r method of operation was to remove the crater fill with team and
scraper until we began to see the rust stains that marked the meteorite-
bearing zone. Then the team stood by and men with hand shovels dug
meteorites in about the same way as they might dig potatoes on the farm.
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 89
For the most part the specimens ranged in size about the same as a good
crop of potatoes with an occasional larger one. At the mid-point of our
second cut we uncovered the top of a rounded mass larger than a basket-
ball and right beside it two others almost as large. Several smaller knobs
were interspersed in such manner that we supposed they all were merely
prominences on a mass some three feet across. Darkness overtook us
before we finished uncovering this object and so we went to bed contem-
plating the big day to follow when we would feast our eyes on a mass of
a ton or more.
All of the specimens we were finding in the crater were completely
oxidized; moreover some of them were quite moist and had to be handled
with great care to prevent their falling to pieces. Consequently, we found
it necessary to clean away all dirt from around them before attempting to
move them. In the morning we renewed this process with all the patience
we could muster. This operation gradually disclosed the disappointment
that we were not uncovering one large mass but several smaller ones,
nested together. The largest weighed eighty-five pounds. Another was
half as large and a third was slightly smaller. There were several lesser
ones. Our " t o n " had gone the way of many a "big meteorite" hope. When
the job was finished we had about 1,200 pounds. Half of this weight was
in specimens ranging from ten to eighty-five pounds.
We later searched the Haviland crater area for magnetic nickel-iron
particles scattered by the crater-forming explosion. Bob Nininger and
Alex Richards dug 1,400 post holes, the removed soil of which was
screened and magnetically combed for nickel-iron particles. A consider-
able scattering of such particles was wrapped. In 1937, using such detect-
ing devices as then were available, we attempted subsoil search for addi-
tional meteorites, but had no luck. The first successful work of this nature
in that area was that of Stockwell ten years later.
mass of iron from outer space, streaking across the sky, seen over a
distance of a thousand miles or more; a blinding light, going out as
suddenly as it had first appeared; thunderous detonations; heat destroying
all vegetation within a diameter of fifty, or perhaps a hundred miles; and
the mighty splash as the mass hit the ground and ploughed its way far
beneath the surface of the plain, sending thousands of tons of rocks and
dirt and fragments of itself upwards and outwards to form a rim that
survived through millenniums.
I slept at last, but was up at daylight to walk around. I picked up two
or three meteorite fragments weighing an ounce or so, and came at last
to the northeast section of the rim, where I happened to notice a chip lying
partly buried beneath a greasewood bush. I attempted to gather it in, but
it wouldn't be picked up. Even with the toe of my boot I could not budge
it; finally I dug out a specimen weighing eight and a half pounds, the
largest found at the Odessa crater up to that time.
We breakfasted and put the instrument to work again. By this time I
regarded Mr. Barnett's invention with profound respect, for each time
Bob indicated a spot to dig, the probing iron found a meteorite without
any fumbling around. Every hole yielded its specimen. We dug out ten
more, for a total of twenty-seven meteorites, aggregating thirty-four
pounds, located by Barnett's magnetic balance All were on the rim of the
crater, the deepest about seven inches beneath the surface.
This experience was as successful as any I have ever had with any
mechanical detector. It was as close to Stockwell's kind of luck as I ever
came, lacking his wizadry with instruments.
I came away from the Odessa crater with three convictions:
First, that there must be within the crater tangible masses of metallic
meteorites beyond the reach of Barnett's instrument.
Second, I would recommend that the federal government excavate the
crater according to the means I had utilized at Haviland, and that a shaft
should be sunk for underground exploration. The aim should be to pre-
serve the surface appearance as nearly intact as possible, all excavated dirt
being conveyed away from the crater itself.
Third, I was convinced that the crater was of such interest and scientific
importance as to deserve the creation of a park to include its environs by
the State of Texas, with provision for a museum to offer explanatory
exhibits to the public.
My first conviction, that a mass of meteoritic material lay within the
depth of the crater, dissolved in later years as I learned more about the
nature of impact explosions. My dreams of a careful and thorough excava-
tion and of preservation of the unique geological feature for future gener-
ations dissolved also. My recommendations to appropriate officials met
with little response and no action, while the crater was, to my belief,
desecrated by the nature of crude surgery performed upon it a few years
92 FIND A FALLING STAR
later. They dug holes here and there leaving the excavated rubble right
where it was handiest to throw it. There was no trenching to reveal the
structure of the crater. Finally, a ten-foot shaft 160 feet deep was sunk at
the center of the crater and the rubble piled around it. O.E. Monnig wrote
me after he looked at it and said that from now on it is not Odessa Crater,
but " O h desecration!"
2
In 1915 a young Texan sent a small stony meteorite to the National
Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. The Texas specimen was received
with pleasure, for it represented a new find. Up to that year there had been
placed on record only twenty-two stony meteorites over the entire United
States that had not been seen to fall. The young man was sent a check and
asked to search for additional meteorites. In the course of two years he
supplied about a dozen stones, averaging about five pounds each. Then
it was concluded that the collecting job was complete; a scientific paper
was published describing the find; the books on it were closed.
In 1928 I asked Dr. Merrill about this find at Plainview, Texas, which
he had described in 1917. Dignified and scholarly, he gave me the facts,
talking to me as a country school teacher might to a first-grader. Then I
asked him if there were plans to explore further, and he assured me the
job was finished and he judged it good. When I asked if there would be
any objection to my trying my hand at a search in the Plainview area, I
was assured there would be none, but was offered no encouragement.
For years I was unable to initiate such a search. Always I was so broke
that I was forced to plan my expeditions to kill two birds with one stone,
or even three or four—that is, search for several meteorites at a cost of
time and gasoline for one trip. I did make several indirect efforts, working
through residents of the area or visitors to Plainview. In 1931 and 1932
I visited the county surveyor at Plainview and he assured me both times
that if there were any meteorites lying about in his county he would have
found them, for he had lived there forty-two years and "had been on every
square foot of the county."
Finally, in December of 1933, my brother John and I were returning
home from a long, fruitless and tiring trip into Mexico to investigate a
"fifty-ton meteorite" that had turned out to be an outcropping of iron ore,
and a half dozen other stories that had sounded as good and ended as
poorly. We neared Plainview about an hour before sundown.
" W e will stay here tonight," I told John, "and before we go to bed, we
will go out into the country and get a meteorite. We'll sleep better."
John looked at me with real alarm. Was I feeling all right? What was
I talking about? Did I know of any meteorite? Had I seen it? Hadn't we
just wild-goose-chased a half dozen reports in Mexico? This, the first trip
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 93
he had taken with me, had proved to be anything but pleasant, as well as
luckless. The food had been terrible, the water worse. Fleas, ticks, ants,
scorpions and snakes had helped to make our days and nights in Mexico
miserable. We had found absolutely nothing, and here we were, three
days before Christmas, returning home nearly broke.
But I did have something of a plan to account for my optimism. There
was pretty good reason to think it might work, and anyway, I told myself,
it is better to think up than to think down. This Plainview prospect never
had yielded anything yet, but I was confident it would yield if I made a
house-to-house canvass.
We pulled into the first cabin camp we approached at the outskirts of
Plainview. We paid for our four walls, with iron bedstead and mattress,
and drove into the countryside.
I started rapping on farmers' doors catching the men just back from the
fields at dusk, showed them my sample of a stony meteorite and explained
I was in the market for similar stones. The first surprised farmer told me
he had seen that kind of rock many times, that it was about the only kind
of rock around there, but that he never picked up and saved any. I gave
him my card and told him I would be back.
At the next place, I got about the same results. At the third farm, the
family was new; the farmer remembered seeing nothing like my sample.
At the fourth house, the large family and hired help were at the supper
table, eating by lamplight. The patriarch of this group greeted me coolly
and with some puzzlement. When I felt that impatience was turning into
hostility I managed to interject that I would pay for stones like my sample
at the rate of one dollar per pound.
The father jumped to his feet, grabbed the lantern and rushed out into
the yard, followed by an eight-year-old daughter. In a couple of minutes
they were back, bringing an eight-pound meteorite.
"Is this what you are looking for? We've been using it to hold down
a chicken coop against the wind."
When I handed him a check, he said he believed he could find more
specimens about, but would have to wait for daylight.
Out at the car, I laid the meteorite in my brother's lap. "Let's go back
to town and go to bed," I told him.
The next day we continued our survey and by evening had acquired
twenty-six meteorites, totaling 152 pounds, paid for with checks I could
cover with a note before they reached Denver.
One elderly gentleman listened with considerable curiosity as I ex-
plained my mission and displayed my sample; then something seemed to
click in his memory.
"Let's go out and look around the barn," he suggested.
From one place to another he searched, finding nothing. Finally he went
to the cow shed and from a crossbeam he took a small fist-sized meteorite.
94 FIND A FALLING STAR
"I've been keeping this around to take after my bull with," he told me.
"My bull has a pretty mean disposition but when he goes on a rampage
I only need to hit him once with this, somewhere around the head, and
he quiets right down."
The old farmer had to find a new method of bull-subduing or a new
instrument, for he sold the meteorite to me.
At a well-cultivated farm I received a somewhat stern reception from
a generously proportioned woman of middle age who appeared at the
back door.
H e r hand fixed firmly on the screen door latch, she demanded, "What
do you want?"
As affably as possible, I described my purpose. Telling her I was hunting
for rocks "like this," I showed her my specimen, said I had reason to think
there might be similar stones on her farm, and concluded with the pro-
nouncement that I would pay a "dollar a pound" for them. My hostess'
stare grew progressively more cold and threatening until those last magic
words. Then her face melted into a thin smile as she seemed to gaze past
my head in an effort to recollect something.
Finally, " H o w long you going to be here?"
"Just long enough to find out if you know of any stones like this," I told
her.
"Well, there's some of that kind around here some place. You go look
around the garage and I'll go down in the basement."
When I came back from my search she was waiting on the porch with
a meteorite in each hand. Each bore a coating of salt a fourth of an inch
thick.
"Is this what you want?"
I nodded.
"Well, we've been using these as weights in the pork barrel. That's why
they're covered with salt. Wait here. I think there's more."
She brought three more stones. When I paid her for the lot she stared
at the check a moment and shook her head.
"You know," she said wonderingly, "that's more than I got off the farm
this year."
Crops had been an utter failure in that dust-blown depression year of
1933.
John and I drove into one farmyard that seemed to be unoccupied and
decided to have a look around. I walked out to the windmill and the
adjacent milk house. In the dry milk trough lay a four-pound meteorite
that probably had been used as a weight on a milk crock cover. Three
more stones had been thrown at the foot of an old apple tree in the small
grown-over orchard. Another lay by one of the windmill legs. At the next
house, where we were able to purchase several meteorites, we asked about
the vacant place.
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 95
3
The discovery of new meteorites carried a bit of glamour in the minds
of many persons. Offers to participate in my quests came rather frequently
from friends who had been keeping an eye on my adventures. Actually,
of course, my efforts often seemed more successful as viewed from the
sidelines than as seen through the eyes of a man who had money invested
in them. Though often a project fell flat, the usual outcome was that my
backer or "Cooperator" took the disappointment philosophically and
waited for another opportunity to come along which might be luckier for
both of us.
Meteorite finds have been more rare than discoveries of comets in the
sky. Consequently any new meteorite find was an event considered news-
worthy, but the many fruitless efforts that plagued our days were not so
well known. We never made any effort to keep them secret, but the
newsmen did not see them as worthy of type space, nor was I anxious to
have the failure publicized.
I always warned "investors" that there might be no visible results from
our effort. Generally the proposition was that they would furnish the cash
outlay and I would give my time and knowledge, any discovery to be
shared fifty-fifty.
Tektites with author and Addie.
Dr. Nininger's basement study in Denver.
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 97
McKinney, Roscoe Fleming, and Gene Lindberg of The Denver Post; the
late Lee Casey of The Rocky Mountain News; Frank Conly, a free-lance
magazine writer, and, of course, Frank Cross.
I was not quite sure there was not a thorn in the publicity bouquet when
my friend and fellow professor, E.L. Craik of McPherson, who had been
with me to witness the 1923 fireball, wrote: "Congratulations! I see you
made the same front page as Floyd Dillinger." The latter at that time was
Public Enemy Number One. But I could not avoid some feelings of pride
years later when public attention came from such publications as Literary
Digest, Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post.
justify further ground investigation. The late Otto Roach of Denver, one
of the West's fine photographers, accompanied us, proficiently recording
our study on film.
The first reconnoitering trip occupied three days and embraced a jour-
ney of 2000 miles over parts of Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. The
plains country, largely uncultivated, seemed to offer the greatest oppor-
tunities for discovery of significant features. We thought that we might
recognize craters and scars that had retained most of their original charac-
teristics despite passage of centuries, undisturbed except by surface ero-
sion. We photographed numbers of buffalo wallows and prairie lakes.
Over Texas, we flew back and forth for some time before we identified
the Odessa crater, which is located in the midst of an expansive plain
dotted by hundreds of playa lakes that are dry most of the time. Herbert
was alone in the cockpit and the other three of us, in the cabin, were busily
scanning the landscape when finally I spotted the crater and penciled a
bulletin that was passed to the pilot. Immediately our Lockheed Vega
turned sharply and went into a complicated pattern of circling, ascending,
swinging and dipping over and back, round and round while Roach
snapped his shutter repeatedly, Otto Roach secured what is to my mind
the only truly serviceable photograph of Odessa ever obtained.
Two years later Herbert Fales flew again to Denver, and a friend,
Chester Lee, and I went with him on a reconnaisance flight, our third
passenger this time being Dr. Alfred M. Bailey, newly appointed director
of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. We flew across southern
Colorado and northern New Mexico to the famous Arizona crater. We
circled this great bowl several times, then landed in Winslow, Arizona, to
make a ground visit.
That night we spent at La Posada, the Fred Harvey hotel in Winslow.
The heat was terrible and our discomfort was not mitigated by the constant
puffing back and forth beneath our window of an old coal-burning switch
engine. At breakfast, when I asked Herbert how he had slept, he replied
that he thought he had not slept at all.
Herbert Fales' interest in meteorites was not an evanescent thing, but
grew from his training and experience in metallurgy. He set out to secure
representatives of as many of the different varieties of meteorites as possi-
ble, and built an exceptionally fine collection.
Through the years, on occasions when times were unusually tough for
Addie and me, I would look through our stock, pick out an especially
desirable specimen and write to Fales, offering it for his collection. Invari-
ably he would buy it. He was one of three or four eager collectors whom
I always could count upon for the price of a specimen in an emergency.
Each of these collectors presently owns certain meteorites which I never
would have let go except that necessity demanded it. Always I could
console myself that these specimens would be in good hands.
100 FIND A FALLING STAR
In the middle thirties I first met Oscar E. Monnig of Fort Worth, Texas.
We had corresponded as early as the late twenties. Oscar asked me if the
"Nininger method" of discovering meteorites was secret. He reminded
me that he had been interested in meteorites almost as long as I had and
yet, he said, he had "never found a meteorite larger than could be accom-
modated in an ordinary desk drawer." We worked cooperatively on nu-
merous occasions. As the years passed Oscar's collection filled many a desk
drawer, or comparable receptacle, and several specimens had to be fur-
nished larger quarters.
When he was quite a young man Oscar Monnig initiated a little bulletin,
The Texas Observer, recording observations in astronomy and meteoritics.
He was soon on the way to becoming an avid collector of meteorites. At
the same time that he achieved business success in a very busy life as
president of a large dry goods company, he contributed notably to mete-
oritics.
The success of our search for meteorites always depended upon the
effectiveness of our message to school children and to farmers. But aside
from the search for meteorites there was the challenge of presenting to
scientists facts and opinions concerning the importance of meteorites in
the history and development of our planet.
Over the years I delivered hundreds of lectures throughout the nation
in colleges and universities, in addition to the talks without number given
before classes and assemblies in elementary and secondary schools, and
the other hundreds of addresses before miscellaneous groups and institu-
tions.
Although I have no complete file of this lecture activity I have been able
to reconstruct a list of 182 colleges and universities where I spoke. In-
cluded on the list are many of the great educational institutions of our
land. At some of these, I spoke several times. I spoke on street corners,
in country schools, in the Carnegie Music Hall of Pittsburgh.
Many lecture engagements were made possible by the arrangement for
dual-purpose travel I had worked out with Dean Gillespie for pickup and
delivery of trucks. There were occasions when my only opportunity to
attend a scientific meeting depended upon this combination of labor and
culture, and by notifying schools and institutions of my coming visit to
their city I often was able to pick up a number of "extra" lecture engage-
ments, with honorariums of $25 or $50. Besides such miscellaneous ap-
pointments, there were more formally scheduled lecture tours, arranged
in advance to cover a large area and a fairly long period. On some
occasions after the children had reached college age, or were otherwise
looked after, Addie would accompany me, and we would travel to the east
or west coast with a trailer adapted to use as mobile home and laboratory.
But sometimes I drove on these tours alone, or traveled by train.
On one occasion after I had lectured before a Harvard geological
NOT ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IN BOOKS 101
$330, entirely too much to trade for the stone I was offering. I didn't even
mention it, saying there seemed to be nothing suitable for an exchange
and I supposed we could not make a deal.
Dr. English leaned back in his swivel chair, smiled rather mischievously
and said, "I have a piece down in the basement I'll give you for it. It's a
great big thing and I don't think it is Canyon Diablo, but none of us know
what it is since its label was lost years ago."
Of course he knew that I was not in the market for Canyon Diablo, the
most available of all meteorites.
"Well, I'll go down and have a look at it."
We went downstairs and there was a half of a large iron. The shape of
its cut surface told me at once that it probably was the very mass from
which the $330 slice I coveted had been cut, although the 200-pound
hunk was so badly rusted I could not be absolutely sure.
"I'll take a chance on it and accept your offer."
Almost before I finished speaking my host called to his helper at the far
end of the room.
"Ambrose, crate this big chunk and ship it to Nininger's laboratory in
Denver."
Evidently he feared I might change my mind. Before they crated it I
borrowed a hack saw and cut off a very small corner which I polished and
etched on the spot. When I finished Dr. English asked me if I was satisfied.
I assured him that I was.
" D o you mind telling me what it is?"
When I told him it was St. Genevieve, a prize item from St. Genevieve
County, Missouri, he was clearly quite shocked. Apparently the shock
deepened after the shipment was made, for he wrote me that he had been
reconsidering and he wondered if I would be willing to trade back. My
answer was to the effect that I would not consider trading back, reminding
him that he knew well from experience that had he asked me to identify
that mass for him I would have done so gladly without charge; but instead
he had approached me in horse-trader fashion and I had accepted his
proposition. However, I cut a large slice from the mass, polished and
etched it and sent it to him with my compliments. We sold several other
slices of the beautiful St. Genevieve meteorite; then the remaining mass
became one of the prize specimens of our collection.
meteorites are about the color of rusty iron, appearing to have dents in
them. They might look, I said, like an old battered, rusty tin can, but of
course would be very heavy. A little red-headed sixth grader with a
freckled face put up his hand.
"Did you say they look sort of like an old rusty, battered tin can and
are awful heavy? I'll bet Dad and I found one when we were building
fence."
After school was out the principal and I went home with this boy and
found he had a ten-pound meteorite, now known in collections as the
Marsland meteorite.
surface was just as likely to receive meteoritic falls as another, and that the
education of the public as to the importance and value of meteorites would
prove the largest factor in the discovery of meteorites.
It seemed to be that not only must it be due to failure of recognition
that more meteorites were not found in more places, but also that the same
answer must apply to the discrepancy in numbers of stones and irons: if
few meteorites of any kind were recovered due to lack of knowledge
about them, then it was natural to expect that still fewer of the stony
variety would be found, since they differed less from ordinary terrestrial
rocks.
A chief objective of our initial program was to discover stony meteorites
of unwitnessed fall.
The task of teaching the people of the plains to know meteorites, to
distinguish them from other rocks, had seemed formidable, but not nearly
so formidable in our thinking as it actually proved to be in fact.
Opportunity came to speak before scientists as well as laymen. It soon
became apparent that it wasn't only the plainsmen who needed instruc-
tion: The scientists were just about as ignorant of the nature of meteorites.
In certain states where we conducted field work there could not be found
a man who could be relied upon to recognize a meteorite if it were
brought to him.
But the interest factor operated in our favor wherever enough instruction
could be given to create an active interest in "keeping on the lookout"
for possible meteorites.
The people of the state of Kansas have been credited with being "mete-
orite-minded" since 1890, but Mary Kimberly had collected heavy black
"rocks" on her Kansas farm for five years before she succeeded in attract-
ing the attention of scientists to them, aided by the interest aroused by the
great Farmington fall in Washington County, Kansas, in 1890.
At the time of the Farmington fall, and after recognition of Mary
Kimberly's meteorites, Kansas experienced a classic example of what I
have observed to be a tendency of meteorite finds to group themselves
in the wake of some outstanding meteoric event or discovery. During
the next eight years another ten finds were made in as many localities,
four of these meteorites having been in the hands of their finders for
years unreported.
After subsidence of the casual publicity given by Kansas newspapers to
the various discoveries of the nineties, finds in the state where scarce
between 1898 and 1923, and, except for the witnessed Modoc fall of
1905, little was heard of meteorites. There was a complete gap from 1906
to 1923, except for the Cullison stone plowed up in 1911.
It is my opinion that far less than one per cent of Kansans were meteor-
ite-conscious previous to 1924, and less than ten per cent of the farm
population even twenty-five years later. By "meteorite conscious" I mean
108 FIND A FALLING STAR
2
It seemed only necessary for a rock to be found out of its regular
association for it to become a meteorite in the minds of many laymen.
Absence of other similar rocks in the immediate vicinity seemed proof
enough that it must be a meteorite which had fallen from the sky.
So our mail would bulge with samples sent to our home laboratory for
inspection—of 2,000 of these only two were meteorites. The whole great
conglomeration represented the best efforts of many persons to put into
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET A WA Y 111
practical use the information I had endeavored to give them. The ratio of
meteorites among specimens submitted by persons who had heard a lec-
ture or been contacted personally was much better—one meteorite out of
twenty-five or fifty submissions.
Sometimes we were faced with real riddles of masses of iron or stone
which in convincing ways showed characteristics of meteoritic origin and
yet could not qualify for positive identification. Sometimes there seemed
to be no logical explanation for the presence of such masses.
Again and again from the northwest there came samples of what ap-
peared to be slag iron but which the senders insisted could not possibly
have come by human agencies to where they were found. In one instance,
the finder asserted that a mass of several tons was found in the mountains
some sixty miles from any railroad.
About once a year, or oftener, during the thirties, a sample would arrive
from the mountainous terrain bordering the Columbia River. The specific
locations of these samples always were kept more or less secret, however.
I suspected that they may all have come from the same mass because all
of them showed the same structure, but all efforts to obtain exact field
information failed and we never were able to investigate the source.
Others have reported similar experiences of failure in attempts to secure
accurate information as to the location source of iron samples from the
northwest.
These apparently unanswerable riddles were one thing, but all across
the country in the twenties and thirties, leading universities, colleges and
museums were exhibiting spurious specimens as meteorites or the reverse
—displaying true meteorites under labels of ordinary rocks and minerals.
In 1931 I stopped at a Canadian university to view a mineral collection
reputed to be one of the finest on the North American continent. I went
up and down the aisles looking over the cases of beautiful minerals that
filled the room from one end to the other. When I reached the display of
heavier iron minerals I saw a little specimen I was sure must be an an iron
meteorite. It was labeled as magnetite from Leeds, Quebec. I hunted up
the custodian to ask permission to examine the specimen, but was told
there was no way of obtaining access to any of the cases, and that certainly
there could be no error in the labeling since the curator was one of the
top mineralogists of North America. Finally I found my way to the cura-
tor's office and asked an assistant if I might check the specimen in question.
He was insulted on behalf of the absent curator, but he reluctantly agreed
to open the case for me. With his permission I used an emery wheel in
the museum shop to grind just a little corner of the specimen, where it
promptly showed bright metal instead of the black magnetite. When we
ground down a bit more I polished it by hand and then etched it, bringing
out a beautiful Widmanstatten figure.
The little Leeds iron was magnetic; it was black, or rather dark brown;
112 FIND A FALLING STAR
it was heavy. Magnetite has all of those qualities. And so the little Leeds
iron, an immigrant to our planet, was given membership in the great
family of terrestrial iron ores.
At eight different times in eight different institutions I found meteorites
masquerading under other labels. As many times or more I discovered
terrestrial rocks classified as meteorites.
The Rosebud meteorite previously discussed, which was pronounced to
be a wind-blasted lava boulder was covered over every square centimeter
of its surface with fusion crust such as is found on no other rock. It bore
hundreds of characteristic pits or pizoglyphs. It showed perfect orientation
of those pits and absolutely no marks of terrestrial erosion. Yet the entire
geology staff of a university gave it an erroneous classification. Perhaps
those men had been trained as readers and memorizers of text books,
presented with solved problems. I heard a geologist deliver a popular
lecture within sight of perfect examples of all types of faulting, erosion,
lava flows, talus slopes and fans, while using only book illustrations which
referred to features hundreds or thousands of miles away.
In 1931, when I was passing through a university city, I telephoned the
department of geology to ask if there was a collection of meteorites. I was
informed they had one meteorite, which Dr. Oliver C. Farrington had
identified for them a few months before after it had lain in the rock
collection for fifteen years as a favorite example of glacially scratched
boulders. This was the beautiful little Lafayette, Indiana, stone, one of the
most perfect and beautiful of oriented specimens. All of its most important
features—its orientation, fusion encrustation, crinkly glass thread lines
and readily distinguishable forward and rear surfaces—had been de-
scribed in print, with illustrations, as they related to other meteorites.
In one university museum two polished sections of a stony meteorite
were exhibited as limonite, while the third fragment of the same meteorite
lay in a box of discards destined for the city dump until I rescued it.
Following a lecture in Fort Worth, Texas, in the middle thirties, I
invited questions from the audience of geological society members. After
several other queries, a middle-aged geologist spoke up in a tone that
reflected both impatience and skepticism:
"What evidence have you or anyone else that any of those specimens
which you displayed tonight came from out of space?"
3
Many times results followed a long while after the event, and a tour of
lectures or exploration would be capped with success years later, or miles
away, or through some indirect association.
A lecture I gave in the Sharon Springs, Kansas, school about 1933,
yielded only one visible result at the time. It brought me into acquaintance
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET AWAY 113
with Mr. R. A. Dollarhide, who then was the telegraph operator at the
railroad station in that town. Dollarhide was an avid collector of Indian
artifacts and various kinds of rocks.
He sent in a few samples, none of which proved to be meteoritic; and
I lost track of him for some time. Then he sent in a chip that he said had
been taken from a mass of several hundred pounds near the village of
Morland, Kansas, where he was telegrapher at that time.
This was in 1935, a year of heavy expense for us, and I was broke. But
Dollarhide's sample was genuine and his story was good. Dean Gillespie
agreed to put up money for the trip and purchase of the meteorite in
return for half interest.
I made the trip at once. Dollarhide told me where to find the farmer,
Sam Hisey, and told me how Sam had broken his lister—a kind of plow
—on the meteorite in a field he had farmed for many years. It was "the
heaviest darn rock" he had ever seen, Hisey had said, "big as a wasFl tub
and in a field where I've never even seen a pebble before."
We went out to the field and what I saw there set my nerves tingling.
A mass that weighed later at more than 600 pounds had been pried out
of the soil. It had been broken into three pieces, probably at the time of
fall, but they plainly could be fitted back together. Morland turned out to
be one of the world's eight largest aerolites.
Mr. Hisey had supposed that the stone had arrived since the last year's
plowing. However, the meteorite was plainly aged and no doubt had
landed long before settlement of the area by white men. It had been
embedded near the top of a small hill where erosion by water and wind
gradually had lowered the surface several feet, eventually exposing the
stone to the plow.
Had Dollarhide not heard the story, investigated it and sent me the
small sample, Hisey would have carried out his plan to hitch a team to
the troublesome stone and drop it, into a deep ravine that traversed his
farm.
As the story of Hisey's find got around, neighbors remembered that a
fifty-pound stone of the same kind had been found by an early settler and
used in the foundation of a neighboring farm building some fifty years
before. Some fragments of this piece, with cement still clinging, were
recovered from the building remnants. Years later, another ninety-seven-
pound mass was found by pheasant hunters about three miles south of the
Hisey farm. This stone lay in a deep ravine under a fence that still held
an empty wire loop from which the meteorite evidently had hung and
been buried as a "dead man" to hold the fence down. Soil erosion appar-
ently had deepened severely what had been a mere ditch when the fence
was erected. Analyses of the three stones proved they belonged to the
same fall.
I became more convinced than ever that there must be hundreds of
114 FIND A FALLING STAR
other meteorites that went unfound because the margin of chance was not
in their favor.
Our methods of field search were built on logic in a situation where the
mathematical odds against us necessarily were great. We had studied our
map of the Great Plains thoroughly. In the southwestern corner of Kansas
there was a block of six counties from which not a single meteorite ever
had been reported. This was strange in an area where soil conditions and
density of population were favorable to the finding of specimens. Alex
Richards was instructed to concentrate on this area. He worked persis-
tently, lecturing in high schools, speaking before clubs and reaching by
personal contact as many persons as he could. But our small fund for the
assignment soon was exhausted, with nothing to show for it but the re-
corded fact that hundreds of school pupils and other hundreds of parents
had been offered acquaintance with meteorites.
Again and again, as we were able, we invaded more and more of this
area of some 6,000 square miles. Repeated negative results failed to dent
my certainty that meteorites were distributed indiscriminately and that
failure to find them reflected only the incompleteness of search.
In March, 1935, Bob and I were returning from a trip into New Mexico
and chose a route through southwestern Kansas in the midst of dust bowl
storms that were blowing acres of topsoil from the farms. At the end of
four days of discouraging battle with dust-laden winds and sandblown
roads, we drove wearily into the county-seat town of Hugoton, Kansas.
We stayed the night with former students of mine, the Hubbards. These
hospitable people were tireless in their efforts to make us comfortable in
spite of blowing dirt, but when we awoke in what had been a freshly
cleaned room the night before, the once immaculate bed linen was the
color of creamed coffee, with two incongruous white spots where our
heads had rested on the pillows, and our feet plainly tracked the floor.
Hubbard urged us to arrange for a lecture in the high school, but we
were anxious to be on our way. Then he mentioned that the principal was
another student of mine and I changed my plans. I was greeted warmly
at the school and invited to address a special assembly. Since there was not
time for the janitor to remove the deposit of blown-in dust from the
auditorium seats, the lecture was given in the library, where the 300 pupils
sat on chairs or table tops or stood, all of them examining with interest
the specimens I sent around for inspection.
At the close of my talk a senior boy, John D. Lynch, Jr., came forward
and told me that one of the specimens resembled a stone his father and
he had plowed out with the lister some years before. The stone had been
thrown under the fence and, so far as he knew, was still there.
Bob and I, with Hubbard and the boy, drove out to the farm. The stone
was found, just a corner still protruding from a sand drift rapidly forming
under the fence. It was plain the sixteen-pound object was but a fragment
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET AWAY 115
Judge Meade told me how to reach the farm of Mr. Thornhill, fourteen
miles out from town. When I reached there, the farmer was busy, training
a young stallion. There was no sign of a meteorite about the yard. When
I told him of my conversation with the judge, Thornhill insisted he didn't
remember any such thing. Finally I brought a specimen from the car.
"If you can remember where it is, and if the meteorite is genuine, I'll
pay you fifty dollars, sight unseen."
Immediately the farmer yelled for his hired hand.
"Flaky, show these men where Arkansas built the fence for us."
Thornhill explained that the fence builder had taken a pile of white
caliche rocks—desert limestone—for dead men, and had carried the
"black rock" along for the same purpose.
There were about fifty dead men along the fence line, all of them white
but one, and nearly all of them buried at intervals along the two-mile fence
wherever it crossed a ditch or a dry wash, as weights to hold the wire down
to keep in the cattle. Bob was with me. We both took shovels and started
digging down to the dead men. The twenty-sixth was a 127-pound mete-
orite. We stowed it in the car trunk, gave a check to the farmer and he
responded with a broad smile.
"You like fried chicken? Pick out a couple from the pen."
He dressed them and packed them in ice, and directed us to stop at the
next restaurant. They fried us a fine fresh chicken dinner.
One hot, windy summer day I sat down at a lunch counter in Sterling,
Colorado, and ordered a hamburger sandwich and coffee. I laid a small
stony meteorite beside my water glass. Shortly a cattle truck stopped in
front and the driver entered and sat down beside me. He wiped the sweat
and grime from his face, rubbed the sand from his eyes, wiped his eye-
glasses with a napkin, replaced them and reached over and picked up the
little meteorite. He examined it briefly and put it down.
" D o you know what it is?" I asked him.
"Well, it looks like a rock."
"Yes, it is a rock, but a very special one. It fell from the sky."
"Oh? you mean it's one of those meters?"
He picked up the meteorite again, hefted it and turned it over. "You're
not kidding?"
I assured him I was not.
The driver took a swig of coffee, wiped his mustache and examined the
meteorite again.
"You know, my brother-in-law over in Nebraska may have one of those
things in his yard. It's a big thing. He bumped into it when he was plowing
several years ago in the field where there were no other rocks. He brought
it up to the house and it's been lying in the yard ever since."
I asked him how far we were from his brother-in-law's place. The
118 FIND A FALLING STAR
distance, 110 miles, seemed too far to risk a wild goose chase so I handed
him a leaflet on how to recognize meteorites and asked him to send
another to his brother-in-law. A few weeks later I received a sample of a
somewhat old and weathered meteorite that represented a rather rare
type. When I went to Nebraska to see it I found the farmer had about 450
pounds of meteorite in the yard and we were able to gather another 150
pounds from the hilltop where he had plowed it up and from a fence row
where he had thrown a forty-five pound fragment. This was the Potter,
Nebraska, find.
We recovered a total of sixty-five meteorites during 1937-38. Each has
something of a story. But to me the most exciting aspect of our mounting
success was the fact that my contention that meteorites were an important
feature of the earth, both geologically and astronomically, was being
proved.
4
Among the most interesting of witnessed meteorite falls is the one that
interrupted a burial service being conducted near the little town of Johns-
town, Colorado, on July 6, 1924.
The explosions and puffs of gray "smoke" that accompanied the shower
of stones were heard and seen by no fewer than 200 persons, mourners
in the church yard or workmen in the fields. A fifteen-pound specimen was
dug out of the roadside just thirty feet from the church door, where it had
fallen with an audible thud and buried itself twenty inches into the
ground. A fifty-pound stone was dug immediately from wet ground in
which a farmer had seen it bury itself to a depth of five feet. A seven-pound
stone and two weighing three and a half pounds each were picked up in
fields where they had been seen to strike. Numbers of pea-size to walnut-
size stones were gathered between the cemetery, two miles west of Johns-
town, and Mead, ten miles south.
Fifteen years after this fall, in 1939, I was invited to address a group
of employes of a Denver dry goods firm who wished a speaker on some
subject considerably removed from matters of merchandising. After I
spoke to the group of about thirty persons, the chairman, Sam Dreith,
came over to me.
"I've got a meteorite that I saw fall."
I asked when, where, and he told me it had been about fifteen years
before, near Johnstown. He was out raking hay with a team and dump rake
when the noise of the meteor frightened his horses. He saw a stone drop
not far away in the field, a black stone leaving a little vapor trail, but he
didn't break his raking pattern. It was on the next day that he reached that
point in the field and his rake kicked up the stone. He carried it home,
put it in the bottom of his trunk, and had never taken it out since. When
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET AWAY 119
he went home the next week end, he pulled the meteorite from the trunk
and brought it to me in Denver. It was a beautifully oriented, fresh
looking stone weighing five pounds, perfectly preserved after its long
years in storage.
Our field work of 1939 was crowned by recovery of the largest meteor-
ite that Addie and I ever retrieved personally, the one-and-one-third-ton
iron meteorite of Goose Lake, California. Discovery of this great meteor-
ite can be credited to a pair of deer hunters. Recovery of the ponderous
iron from its lava mesa in uninhabited wilds can be credited to the in-
genuity and years of logging experience of two old-time woodsmen, Olin
E. Ake and I. C. Everley.
Deer hunting had not been good in the fall of 1938 for Joseph Secco
and Clarence Schmidt. Deer were plentiful in the rugged Devil's Garden
atop the Modoc lava beds of the extreme northeastern corner of Cali-
fornia, but luck had failed the two hunters until they had just one day
remaining to get their bucks. In mid-afternoon of the last day, Clarence
sat down on a log at the edge of a rocky flat. Joe had started across the
clearing to hunt the neighboring forest. Suddenly Clarence heard a
strange sound from across the lava field: melodic "pings" and "bongs" as
of iron. He followed after his partner. A few hundred feet away he found
Joe sitting astride a great irregular brown mass of iron, pounding away at
it with a chunk of basalt. The resulting sound seemed to Clarence like a
cross between a mission bell and a blacksmith's anvil. Though he never
in his life had seen a meteorite, he had read about them, and he told Joe
he was sure this must be one.
The boys wanted to take a sample, but with no amount of pounding
were they able to detach a fragment. Finally they went back to camp for
a meat saw. By the time they cut off a tiny corner of the steely mass their
saw was ruined.
During that winter we received a letter from Oakland, California, con-
cerning a large "possible meteorite in northern California" and we added
this one to the list of prospects to be investigated as soon as we could
arrange for a trip to that state. We received a second report of a suspected
large meteorite from Dr. Frederick C. Leonard of the University of Cali-
fornia at Los Angeles, who was a great enthusiast about meteorites. He
talked of almost nothing else. As an astronomer he looked at the study of
meteorites as astronomical; I insisted that it was as much a geological as
an astronomical subject.
The following April when we were in Los Angeles, Dr. Leonard
showed us a small sample of this "questionable" meteorite. Leonard said
he was puzzled; that he had thought the piece to be meteoritic but had
been given a rather indefinite report by the geology department following
examination of the specimen. He wanted my opinion—which was, at once
and with no uncertainty, that the material was genuinely meteoritic. Im-
120 FIND A FALLING STAR
mediately then, Leonard wanted to know what was the proper procedure
to undertake to recover the mass. First, I told him, we must learn whether
the specimen lay on public or private land. From the general locality of
the reported site, it appeared the land might be government-owned, in
which case a report would have to be made to the United States National
Museum. Leonard asked me to proceed with a recovery effort, but stressed
that he wanted very much to participate.
Addie and I drove to Oakland, where I talked with Dr. Earl G. Linsley,
director of Chabot Observatory, who had written the first letter we had
received about the possible meteorite and who referred us to Clarence
Schmidt. We sought him out and arranged for him to go with us to the
northeastern corner of the state and lead us to the meteorite. We also
secured from the Forest Service a promise that a surveyor would under-
take immediately to determine the ownership of the land involved.
Because Schmidt had not returned to the spot, he realized it might be
difficult to relocate the meteorite. He knew it lay in a clearing on top of
the lava mesa out of Alturas, but this was vast and rugged territory.
Addie, Schmidt and I started out, driving first to Alturas and then going
some thirty miles farther tortuously and ruggedly over dirt road to the foot
of the lava mesa that rises from the western shore of Goose Lake to earn
its name of Devil's Garden. A logging road led by a round-about course
to the "Garden," fifteen miles away, but melting snows had rendered it
impassable for ordinary passenger vehicles. Schmidt thought he could lead
us on foot by a much shorter course. We spent a half day tramping through
dense forest, up canyons and over ridges, and finally reached the top of
the mesa only to find we were in the wrong spot. Disappointed and tired,
we returned to camp.
The next morning we obtained horses and rode the longer way round.
This time Schmidt led us to the magnificent iron, lying just as he had seen
it before and just as it had lain no doubt for centuries. We rode back down
to civilization, telephoned to Dr. Leonard and invited him to come join
in the fun, and made plans to bring the meteorite down from the moun-
tain.
Everley and Ake, with two of their neighbors, rigged up a four-ton log
wagon, drawn by four heavy draft horses, with a block and tackle, and
loaded it down with other tools, bedding and provisions and cameras. Dr.
Linsley and an assistant had arrived with a panel truck. Dr. Leonard,
accompanied by Dr. Robert Webb, professor of geology at U.C.L.A., was
en route. Leaving word for the two Los Angeles professors that the first
half of the climb could be made by auto, we set out on foot, following the
wagon, hoping they would catch up with us. When we were about half
way up the mesa slope we could hear Dr. Webb calling and I ran back
down the trail to meet him and Dr. Leonard, who had driven as far as the
road permitted. We all walked on, soon overtaking the wagon. We
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET AWAY 121
reached the mesa top and then proceeded across the two miles or so of
boulder-strewn, muddy mesa, dodging ponds and fording small streams
of spring run-off, until we approached the meteorite where it lay on
reasonably dry, boulder-paved terrain.
Frederick Leonard had shed most of his academic dignity by this time.
When we came within sight of the big iron the pudgy little professor ran
on ahead, placed his hands lovingly on the great meteorite, bent and
kissed it. Then he lifted his hands skyward and turned to face us.
"This is the greatest day in meteoric astronomy!"
Now we all joined in to fondle the prize, an almost unbelievable chunk
of metal that seemed to link us, there in that wild corner of the earth, with
worlds beyond.
We examined and photographed the mass where it lay and then made
camp.
The next morning the men worked for hours with block and tackle,
trying to load that mass of iron on the wagon. They had constructed a
tripod of timbers cut from the nearby forest, and they tried to slide and
haul and push the meteorite up this crude ramp to the wagon. There were
several breakdowns and repairs but finally, after persistent efforts and with
infinite patience, the loading was completed.
Some miles of almost hub-deep mud, boulders, treacherous ponds and
streams lay before us. Scouts went ahead to pick out a course and in some
cases to build a makeshift road, clearing away boulders, filling in low spots
with rocks and brush, and cutting down small trees.
It required a day and a half to work our way back down the mountain
to the road. There the meteorite was transferred to a truck and taken to
San Francisco, where it was displayed at Treasure Island until it was
removed eventually to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The
finding-place was national forest land, and so this great meteorite belongs
to the nation.
"finders keepers" and decided to appropriate the hugh block of metal for
his own. This was no small task for a woodsman in remote forest in 1902,
but he believed once the mass was on his premises his ownership would
be secure, and so he addressed the removal task with singular ingenuity.
He fashioned a capstan with chain anchor and a braided wire rope to wind
on it. Then he constructed a log chassis to which he attached sections of
logs for wheels. Using improvised blocks and levers, he skillfully engi-
neered the giant meteorite onto his crude carriage and, with windlass and
horse, moved it inch by inch and foot by foot three fourths of a mile to
his own land.
The ensuing excitement over Hughes' iron rock alerted the steel firm,
and suit was filed against Hughes. Again the matter reached a state su-
preme court, and again it was held that the meteorite constituted "part of
the soil." Hughes saw no part of the $20,500 for which the Willamette
meteorite was sold, although had it not been for him the meteorite might
have remained unfound, and would not be seen by thousands of people
annually in the American Museum of Natural History.
During our years of collecting we purchased several thousand speci-
mens without a single complaint ever being filed in court. Where the find
had been made by other than the landowner we always recommended a
division of the sale price between the finder and the property owner.
Usually the owner insisted on the finder receiving the proceeds, although
in a few cases the money was split. Some sort of division of ownership
between finder and landowner would seem to be an equitable arrange-
ment.
A more sensitive problem than the matter of ownership can arise if one
collector "encroaches" on an area of fall to which another makes prior
claim on the basis of a program of search already undertaken. When a man
or an institution through its representatives in the field discovers the
remains of a dinosaur or some other important fossil it is regularly ac-
cepted that such discovery establishes a prior right to work in the area until
the entire skeleton or skeletons have been safely recovered, assuming, of
course, that in any such case proper arrangements have been made with
the landowner. A meteorite fall can be studied properly only if all of the
recovered material can be examined critically and compared.
The going price to owners of meteorites had been established pretty
well before my time at a dollar a pound. We made this our basic figure.
Deviations up and down from this figure were based upon the type of
specimen, size, state of preservation, special features as to form and surface
markings, internal structure and composition, as well as any facts known
of the fall. For my predecessors in the collecting field, who collected only
casually, the price paid to the finder usually constituted the entire cost to
the buyer. For me, however, it often was the minor part of my costs.
Sometimes Alex or I or another of our "staff" would spend weeks in the
NOT ALL THE BIG ONES GET A WA Y 123
field. Much time too was spent in the office and laboratory, answering the
letters and testing the samples that came in response to our program of
lectures—many of which were free—leaflets, radio and press appeals. All
of these activities were costly in both time and money. By the time a
meteorite had been acquired, classified and undergone some study it had
become an expensive item. In our most successful year the average cost
of acquiring a specimen was about $14 a pound in addition to the price
paid to the farmer who owned the land where it was found. At the end
of the thirties, in terms of dollars of the thirties, I figured that the average
cost of discovering a new meteorite amounted to about $300 in addition
to the purchase price. For one who was working on as frayed a shoestring
as I was, the rare occasions over the years in which our prior field work
was usurped and we lost out in acquisition of the specimens recovered
subsequently seemed like major catastrophes.
Selling specimens had drawbacks, too. Word came to me that a man
whom I shall call Mr. Von Hess desired to purchase a meteorite which he
would then present to an institution. This was sometime in the thirties
during unusually tough times, and I could not afford to pass up an oppor-
tunity to cash in on a specimen. Because I made it a point to know who
had collections of meteorites, I knew that Von Hess had none, but that
at one time he had owned a seventy-eight-pound iron which had a rather
interesting history. It had been found in 1881, by a sheep herder, Ignacio
Martin, who had traded it to Thomas Tobens for a small pony. Tom,
believing it to be solid silver and fearing it might be stolen before he could
market it, buried it in a manure pile in his barn, and there it lay for several
years. Mr. Von Hess heard about it, determined that it was meteoritic, and
purchased it for a scientific society.
Since I was told that he wanted "something nice" and that he was
well-to-do, I looked forward to a pretty good sale. I selected a very fine
specimen, beautiful more than scientifically valuable, to present for his
inspection. This was an end piece from the Xiquipilco fall, with a polished
face the size of a slice of bread that displayed exquisite Widmanstatten
figures. The nicely sculptured natural surfaces were beautifully black. The
iron weighed about six pounds and today would be worth $250 and $300.
I was cordially received by Von Hess. He leaned back in his swivel chair
and admired the meteorite. He inspected the specimen carefully with a
magnifying glass, inquiring as to the technics of polishing and etching. As
our conversation proceeded, Von Hess reached into his pocket, took out
a pen-knife, opened it and began very casually to scratch an area in the
center of the polished and etched surface. I almost cried out. He remarked
that the narrow bands were harder than the wide bands in the pattern. Yes,
I replied, I knew this, and I might have added that I could have told him
as much without his damaging investigation. But I was still consoling
myself, or trying to, with the thought that the specimen soon would be
124 FIND A FALLING STAR
his and the arduous re-finishing job would be at his expense, not mine.
No such luck. He greatly appreciated the opportunity to examine the
specimen but he didn't believe he was quite ready to make a purchase. All
the fortitude I could muster was required to bid him a pleasant "good-
day" and betake myself home, contemplating my loss of time already spent
and another two days for the regrinding, polishing, etching and adminis-
tering of anti-rust treatment to the disfigured specimen. Subsequently I
was less timid about cautioning prospective customers not to touch the
finished face of a specimen.
Upinion and force belong to different
elements. To think that you are able by
social disapproval or other coercive means
to crush a man's opinion, is as one who
fires off a blunderbuss to put out a star.
John Morley
8. PROSPECTS
AND PROSPECTORS
During the winter of 1940 Addie and I took our house-trailer into the
Southwest for some lectures and some follow-up field work.
We parked for a night in the town of Wickenburg, Arizona, and Addie
settled down with some reading material and her knitting.
" N o telling when we shall be here again," I remarked. "I think I will
scout around, see if I can locate some prospectors. We might find a new
meteorite."
There was no lead in our files suggesting a meteorite at Wickenburg,
but this was in our favor. Since no meteorite ever had been reported from
this part of Arizona, there might be one to be discovered. I wandered
about the town hang-outs—the drugstore, a bar, a restaurant—asking
about prospectors. Twice I was told of a Mr. Kellis, who no longer was
prospecting but who for forty years had explored the surrounding hills.
I asked directions to his house. After climbing a dozen blocks of dark
streets I reached the white house on the hill where he lived in retirement.
A large pile of rocks marked the front yard. It was about nine o'clock in
the evening, but my knock brought Mr. Kellis to the door, courteous,
white-bearded.
When I identified myself and my misison he was quick to tell me I was
looking in the wrong area, that I should visit the meteorite crater near
Winslow to find what I was seeking.
N o , I told him, presently I was more interested in stony meteorites, not
Canyon Diablo. I showed him a small specimen from my bag.
"You call that a meteorite? You must be mistaken. Meteorites are made
of nickel and iron."
A good deal of persuasion was required to convince him the stone I
showed him was a meteorite.
126 FIND A FALLING STAR
Finally, he shrugged. "Well, you should know your business, and if this
is a meteorite, I may have one out here in my rock pile."
He brought a flashlight and we went out to his pyramid of rocks. There
must have been two tons of stones, and among them, plain in the light,
was a twenty-pound meteorite that had lain there for thirty years. Mr.
Kellis recalled where he had found it, but he never found another there,
nor did we. His was the first stony meteorite to be recorded in the state
of Arizona, except from the widely known shower of 1912 at Holbrook,
in more than thirty years.
Our luck went up and down. For every exhilarating experience of
discovery there were disappointments. There would be months on end
during which we worked just as hard, borrowing and spending, without
receiving even a sliver of meteorite in compensation. After many years of
chasing fireballs I finally accepted recovery of one meteorite from a half
dozen surveys as a good average.
I remember struggling for hours in the sand hills of western Nebraska,
checking out just one among many reports in an effort to map the course
of a fireball. The car sank belly deep in blown sand on a lonely road, many
miles from any source of supplies and far from hope of help. Night was
approaching and I was beginning to expect to sleep with sand for a
blanket. Finally, I foraged weeds at some distance from the car to lay
against the wheels and then, by jacking the wheels one by one and by
various other contrivances produced enough traction to get under way just
as dark closed in. No meteorite ever was recovered from that particular
fall, nor from a majority of all those that were mapped over the years.
The leads that sounded best might bring the deepest disappointments.
Some of these abortive reports sounded so infallible that it seemed they
could not possibly fail to prove good. Every once in a while a tale would
prove genuine and traceable and so pay off for some of the false leads.
Some of those old stories still haunt me—some of them sound so good,
in spite of investigations that produced nothing, that it is hard not to
believe they have a core of substance.
On our first visit to Wickenburg, then just a village, in 1926, we met
an old prospector with an interesting tale. When I asked him about mete-
orites he knew what I was talking about.
"I've got three thousand pounds of 'em. Gathered them myself around
the crater."
Could I see them?
" N o . They're buried."
Would he sell them?
"Yes, if you'll give enough. Want $3,000."
Would he sell part of them?
" N o . Won't show anyone where they're buried until I can make a deal
for all of them at a dollar a pound."
PROSPECTS AND PROSPECTORS 127
He was adamant. "If I don't sell them, the secret will die with me."
He said only that the cache was "not too far" from the crater. I never
found the old man on later visits to Wickenburg.
Was his story true? The tale fitted the nature of a man old in the ways
of prospecting, and experienced in the disappointments and waits and
secrets of that manner of life. I'm sure he is no longer alive and am also
sure he never disposed of his meteorites. I haven't the slightest idea as to
where they were buried.
There were so many tantalizing reports, and one of the most intriguing
and convincing was a tale told me by a man in Prescott, Arizona. I had
gone into a bar on one of my customary tours of community hang-outs
seeking likely individuals with likely stories. I laid a nickel-iron meteorite
on the bar beside a man who was drinking a bottle of beer. He looked
it over carefully.
"Are those worth anything?"
I told him they were. He stood, looking past me for a moment, as if
gathering details out of his memory. Then he pointed to the cigaret
vending machine.
"I found one as big as that machine one time, but it's been fifteen years
ago." He stroked the little specimen before him on the counter. "It was
iron just like that, and had dents in it just like that, and when I hit it with
my hammer it sounded just like an anvil. I know it was the very same
thing."
He had been a surveyor at the time and was running a line for the
government. He told me what line it was. They came to a ravine they
couldn't cross and he had gone south about a quarter mile to where it
could be negotiated—and there in the ditch was this great hunk of iron.
Neither he nor I had the time nor money to make a ten-day trip to the
spot at the time, and I never was able to contact him again. Somehow I
lost the notes I scribbeld down, including the man's name. I had fully
intended to follow up this lead, having him guide me to the spot. The
territory in which he was working is seldom visited by anyone except deer
hunters, and it may be a hundred years before another man sees that great
iron—if it really exists.
Of all the hundreds of reports I investigated in my years of meteorite
hunting, more than a hundred yielded meteorites, and the other hundreds
all were duds. Few of the productive tales were more convincing than this
man's reports. It is my belief he had found Arizona's finest meteorite
specimen. Whether it could be found again is a question.
The "Danforth puzzle" was another of the teasing, unproductive re-
ports that sounded almost too good to be true, but, on the other hand, too
good to be decided definitely not to be true.
An enormous fireball was seen over the great Maine wilderness. The
next day two men out deer hunting were trudging through a cover of
128 FIND A FALLING STAR
snow over a swampy, timbered area when they came upon a strange scene.
The trees on all sides of them were spattered with mud, and right in front
of them was a big round hole in the forest floor revealing an underground
lake. This hole was nearly round, about nine feet across, and its edges were
clean-cut, almost as if they had been cut with a saw. In this swamp the
forest floor was simply a tangle of roots in a foot-thick blanket of sphag-
num moss that covered a former lake which still persisted under the forest
cover. Such conditions were common in that part of Maine, but the hole!
Such a hole was something new to those hunters, and it proved no less a
puzzle to all who heard their description of it.
So ran the story that was sent to me by George Sprague, who had read
one of the magazine stories about my meteorite hunting and who had a
hunch that here might be the answer to that strange tale that had reached
his ears about the hole in the Maine woods.
His letter intrigued me as much as the tale had interested him. I wrote
back for more details. He explained that he and his brothers had visited
the spot and found things just about as described by the hunters. They had
probed into the pool and had reached a muddy bottom only seven feet
below the surface. No scattered roots were found—only mud. This had
not been an explosion of gas from below; it must have been caused by an
object speeding from above. The only possible answer they could muster
was that the hole had been created by a large meteorite. If I would come,
Sprague wrote, he would guide me to the spot.
Naturally I would come. Where I would obtain money for the undertak-
ing was one of the unknowns in the problem; but the answer was yes, I
would come. Art Thompson came forward this time, offering to take the
gamble and eager to go with me to Maine for this adventure. We were
met at the town of Lincoln and were driven in a somewhat aging Ford to
within a three-hour walk of our destination.
As we approached the spot, shrubs and small trees bowed to our pass-
ing, and we found that by standing in one spot and alternately squatting
and straightening we could soon have the trees on all sides curtseying
gracefully. We were walking over the once open small lake that gradually
had succumbed to the encroachment of mosses and ferns and finally had
come to support a young forest.
In the midst of this strange floating forest we faced a clean-cut opening
to the lake below, cut right through the forest floor. Although it seemed
so clean-cut, close examination of the exposed root-ends showed that no
cutting instrument had been used. All the roots had been broken as if by
a violent blow.
There was no evidence of any lumbering, wood-cutting or other human
activity in the vicinity or, according to our guide, for miles around.
A few years had elapsed since the hunters first had found this hole;
consequently, all mud had been washed from the tree trunks, if they had
PROSPECTS AND PROSPECTORS 129
once been spattered as reported; but there still was evidence of violence
dating back to the time of the hunters' report. The top of a sapling near
the hole had been cut off, and the annual rings in the healing growth
corresponded to the time of the first report. Also, bark had been knocked
from the trunk of another tree a few feet from the hole, yet we found no
scattered roots such as one would expect to find if any had been thrown
out by the force that cut the hole.
We prodded the pool and found muddy bottom overlying gravel at a
depth of seven feet. A drill bit brought up nothing but granitic gravel
when it refused to go deeper. O u r mine detector failed to register any-
thing, even though Art, an adept operator, explored all within a radius of
some fifty yards. A search for fragments of any odd-looking stony matter
was also in vain. We returned baffled and by no means satisfied.
Thompson and I made this initial trip in the late thirties. I was able to
secure funds to employ a magnetometer operator to go with me on a
second trip to the spot. Our results were no better than the first time. The
same was true of other efforts over a decade.
Two possible explanations came to mind:
1) A stony meteorite of an extremely fragile and friable variety may
have perforated the forest floor and skidded some distance on the muddy
lake bottom. Such a mass would not respond to the instruments that we
used.
2) A very unsupported, but possible, hypothesis is that an ice meteorite
(a variety not yet proven to exist) cut the hole and left no other trace of
itself.
It was suggested that pehraps a bomb or a box of explosives had been
dropped from a military plane from a military installation not too far away,
but this idea seems a bit far-fetched; besides, the evidence appears to point
to a cutting agent too large to fit such a solution. Also, our careful search
for indications of anything associated with explosive devices proved fruit-
less.
2
Accompanying many and probably all falls of ponderable stones and
irons there is a far greater weight of finely divided material (of dust, sand
and gravel sizes) that is showered over several square miles. What we
collect as meteorites represents merely a small remnant of that which
entered the atmosphere. Under stress of its impact on the atmosphere a
meteorite disintegrates and only the fragments that accidentally escape the
general disintegration of the mass reach the ground as stones or irons.
Efforts have been made intermittently for more than a century to collect
meteoritic or cosmic dust. Two sources—sea-bottom oozes and the arctic
snows—were searched for matter of such origin. I tried several methods.
130 FIND A FALLING STAR
to throw new light on the problems of air resistance to high velocities and
of stratospheric transportation; study of the forms and markings of meteor-
ites as an aid to high-velocity ballistics engineering; possible relationships
with cosmic rays; study and measurement of meteoritic dust and any effects
it might have on the growth of vegetation and the healthy development
of animal life; research into the possible existence of "ethaerial (from
ether and aerial) sound" in connection with the flights of great meteors.
The recovery program included extensive plans for the alerting of and
cooperative efforts among a network of institutions and agencies so there
might be prompt and efficient action on appearance of a fireball, not only
to plot the probable locality of fall and alert both trained staff people and
the general populace for the recovery of specimens, but to study the light
phenomenon and its accompanying dust cloud and sound waves.
Such a comprehensive program was not to be in the 1940's, nor has such
an extensive and coordinated plan ever been effected.
3
From the steps of the Denver Museum of Natural History one can enjoy
the finest landscape view of any museum in America, looking across to the
west where the gigantic peaks of the Rockies rise in a succession of billowy
folds of crustal rocks which have lain exposed to the forces of weathering
through perhaps a hundred million years. How frequent during that time
have been the impacts of meteorites on those mountain peaks?
Perhaps one fall a year has landed within the area under observation.
If these falls average as large a number of fragments as have the falls
recorded in man's experience, then a tremendous number of meteorites
have landed in those mountains. If so, where would they be now? Only
five falls have been recovered out of the area, and of these, only one was
witnessed.
One must allow that most of the meteorites buried themselves at the
time of the fall so deeply that if they were stones they would for the most
part disintegrate before the process of erosion would reveal them. Or, if
instead of striking soil, which would accommodate their interment, they
struck a solid rock, then they must have been shattered so badly that they
would escape notice of any passerby and within a few years would weather
so as to be rendered undistinguishable from ordinary rocks. Then, too,
perhaps less than one per cent of the surface in the region under view is
trodden by man in the course of a generation.
No meteorite whose fall occurred more than a few centuries ago
would be recognizable now unless it were of the iron variety. On this
point there is interesting conjecture: For though man's experience dur-
ing the past convinces us that about twenty-five stony meteorites fall for
every iron, yet Western Colorado has yielded four iron meteorites
136 FIND A FALLING STAR
representing as many falls and only one stony fall, the Johnstown shower
of July 6, 1924.
It might well be assumed that mixed up with the Rocky Mountain sand,
silt and gravel which has been swept out of their descending canyons
during millions of years and added to the soils of the Mississippi Valley
are the remains of millions of meteorites about which nothing more defi-
nite can ever be known.
If there indeed are meteorites in old formations, what are some of the
reasons why such remnants go unrecognized, and in what ways might they
be identified and recorded?
Various attempts have been made to explain this assumed "absence of
meteorites from all but the most recent formations," one hypothesis,
advanced by several writers, being predicated on assigning a compara-
tively late origin for these small additions to our planet. To account for
such a brief and recent accretion, some radical changes in the history of
the solar system have been suggested.
It is my belief that in the present state of our knowledge (or lack of it)
we are not justified in considering the "absence of meteorites from the
older sediments" a problem at all, for the very simple reason that we have
no credible evidence that meteorites in a terrestrialized form are not
present in all of the sediments. The oxidized meteorites I took from the
Haviland, Kansas, crater were so altered as to be mistaken for ordinary
iron concretions.
If the failure of geologists to find meteorites in old formations is taken
as evidence that they are absent, then by the same token we could have
known in 1930 that there were no meteorites in or upon the soil of a
25,000-square-mile area of Texas, an area certainly far better known to
geologists and to laymen than any pre-Pleistocene deposit of similar area
anywhere in the world; yet, beginning in 1933, my own efforts recovered
from that Texas area within ten years more than a thousand meteorites,
all of which evidently had been on the earth a long time.
A few months in the field observing mining operations and miners;
road-building operations and other excavation activities; talking to super-
intendents, foremen and both skilled and unskilled operators, would
firmly convince the observer that even though thousands of meteorites
had been moved by such operations the chances of a single one being
found are very slim indeed.
No adequate search ever has been made to determine whether meteor-
ites are or are not present in any of the older formations. Indeed, a search
sufficient to warrant an answer to the question would be rather difficult
to make unless it should turn out that the older formations are considera-
bly richer in meteorites than are the recent alluvia and other top sedi-
ments. In the first place, only a very small portion of any of those forma-
tions is accessible and, in the second place, the geological profession has
PROSPECTS AND PROSPECTORS 137
never made such a search possible by training its personnel in the art of
identifying even fresh meteorites, to say nothing of those that have under-
gone long weathering.
The cretaceous chalk beds of western Kansas afford a very extensive
exposure of an ancient formation, one that is easily accessible, and that has
long been a favorite hunting ground for paleontologists. The chalk is of
a color which contrasts strongly with that of meteorites as we know them.
During the past eighty years these beds have been visited by probably
several thousand geologists, including students. I interviewed many of
these geologists during my fourteen years of residence in Kansas and
subsequently. By their own admission less than two per cent ever thought
of looking for meteorites during field trips; an equally small percentage
felt that they would have recognized a meteorite had they seen one.
The likelihood of a meteorite being recognized in such a situation is
lessened greatly by the fact that no one knows exactly what changes such
material would undergo during 60 to 100 million years. From observa-
tions on those that are known to have lain in the soil a mere twenty to fifty
years we may surmise that a 60-million-year-old specimen might appear
as a rather ordinary concretion, if indeed it was distinguishable at all from
its surroundings.
Why should meteorites not be preserved as well as organic remains
which often are recognizable in the very oldest sediments? Organic fossils
are identifiable due to their form rather than their substance, and since
meteorites have no distinctive form any alteration in their composition
and structure renders them less recognizable. Most pertified woods would
not be easily recognizable except for the traces of cell structure or the
forms of logs or twigs, and in many cases all trace of the cell structure has
disappeared.
The moon is covered with thousands of craters which astronomers now
generally accept as produced by meteorite impacts. These appear to be of
all ages, some being fresh-looking and others so old that only traces of
their battered forms can be detected. O n e wonders if our weather-trou-
bled planet may have been equally battered and if the evidence has been
erased by erosion.
Naturally, if crater-forming giant meteorites have been assaulting our
earth, then others of small size also must have been pelting the terrestrial
skin. We wonder again not why they have not been found but whether
they may have been and have gone unrecognized.
Meteorites of even moderate age seldom are recognized by geologists
and paleontologists who are the most logical individuals to be expected
to report them in old sediments. Furthermore, the area of outcrops
wherein fossil meteorites might be exposed is so infinitely small as com-
pared to the soil-covered areas in which cultivation is likely to expose them
that they could not with certainty be regarded as absent even had geolo-
138 FIND A FALLING STAR
The little planetoid Hermes missed our planet by a few hundred thou-
sand miles in 1937. In May, 1942, in a brief article, "Cataclysm and
Evolution," published in Popular Astronomy, I proposed that perhaps in the
past such encounters had not always been near misses. I suggested that
collisions with planetoids might explain geological revolutions:
My brief paper provoked little attention. Over the course of the years
I made quite an effort, both in print and in conversation with scientists,
to convince geologists and astronomers of the importance of meteorites
to both sciences.
During the thirties I had done some experimenting with high-power
rifle bullets in the formation of craters. To represent the stratified earth
I used alternate layers of sand and plaster of paris. The contrasting colors
and different textures enabled me to more readily detect the nature of the
results of a shot. I gained some pretty clear notions of how the earth's crust
must respond to a large impact.
I became convinced that all of the lunar features were the result, directly
or indirectly, of meteortic bombardment. This idea was mulled over in my
140 FIND A FALLING STAR
mind for a decade before in March, 1943, in a paper for the Scientific
Monthly entitled "Meteorites and the Moon," I argued strongly for the
meteoritic origin of all lunar features. I also proposed that cometary
encounters "may well be considered as having been responsible on the
earth for the puzzling succession of geological revolutions. . . . "
I argued the proposition that large meteorites are a factor in dynamic
geology more forcefully in "Geological Significance of Meteorites," pub-
lished in the American Journal of Science in February, 1948. As originally
drafted soon after the appearance of the "Cataclysm and Evolution" piece,
this was a much more elaborate treatment of the part cosmic collisions
have played in the earth's development than eventually appeared in print.
I had sent it in to the Journal but it was returned on the grounds that I
belabored geologists too much for conservatism. I filed it away, then after
the epochal fall at Sikhote-Alin in Siberia in 1947 I re-submitted a
modified version and it was published by the very same journal that first
rejected it. Before its appearance Dr. Harlow Shapley, who I assumed
must have read my manuscript, wrote to me to suggest that I read a recent
paper by Dr. Reginald Daly on theVredefort Structure of South Africa,
published in Journal of Geology, Vol. 55, (1947). I sent for a copy. Here
Dr. Daly described just such a feature as I had hypothesized as being
responsible for small crustal movements in the process of mountain build-
ing. This was a major step in paving the way for an acceptance of the
collision explanation of geological revolution. More recent proof of the
correctness of my contentions has been accumulating through the notable
field program of the Canadian Department of Mines and Special Surveys.
In my Journal article I admitted to having often been regarded "as
somewhat of a radical in respect to meteoritical questions," and added that
in my "most reckless moments" I had not been prepared to recognize such
a rate of encounter with large meteorites as was indicated by the two
Siberian falls of 1908 and 1947. I considered the significance of large
stony masses that are disintegrated by the atmosphere and so do not form
craters in most instances, as well as large-scale collisions.
In 1949, in his book, The Face of the Moon (University of Chicago Press),
Dr. Ralph B. Baldwin suggested the magnitude of the effects on earth of
impacts of bodies from space: "Written in the book of geology in still
obscure characters are the records of hundreds of thousands of collisions
of the earth and extra-terrestrial bodies."
The book Target: Earth, by Allan O. Kelly and Frank Dachille, pub-
lished in 1953, in Carlsbad, California, went all out for "collision
geology," but it was not well received; indeed, it was simply ignored. I
believed and still believe Target: Earth to be a great book that will mark
the beginning of a new epoch in the study of geology. Today, the principal
theme of the book is being argued in the best journals.
Our earth shows only a few recognizable scars to mark the points of our
collision with masses too large for the atmosphere to effectively brake
their speed, but we are beginning to learn more of such great pockmarks
as space probes begin to photograph similar damage done to the moon and
the planets.
9. PLATEAU
The arrival of World War II meant an end to the kind of work I was doing,
apart from my curatorship at the museum. Like everyone else, we lived
on news, anxiety and hope for an ending. Gasoline and tires were unavail-
able for anything but essential contribution to the war effort. Rationing
ended the freedom of movement, spur-of-the-moment investigations and
extended travels on which my harvest of meteorites mostly had depended.
For a time I worked as a salvage investigator for the War Production
Board, combing the back country for salvable metals in the old mine
towns, along the abandoned rail beds and where machinery lay disused
in farm lots. I managed to enjoy scouring the mountains for old, disused
railroad tracks, or swinging across some once rich canyon in an old ore
bucket to see what piles of rusting iron might remain at a broken shaft or
mill. Later, I found challenge in oil exploration, working in and out of
Denver and Albuquerque, going on into the developing southern New
Mexico fields to assess possible locations and negotiate for leases. With our
youngest away in college, Addie joined me and we set up a temporary
home in Artesia, New Mexico.
Although the work was full-time, this meant usually an eight-hour day
or forty-hour week. This left a good deal of time for off-hours meteorite
work, because I always had been accustomed to working sixty to seventy
hours a week when self-employed.
It was my habit when traveling in the arid Southwest to carry fruit and
sandwiches, or cheese and crackers, for lunch along the way. I would take
food in hand and stroll about, scanning the ground for meteorites. For
some twenty years I had done this off and on without results, but I felt that
every effort thus made decreased the mathematical odds against my
finding something.
On May 17, 1944, I stopped for a supper break at about 6:00 P . M . ,
approximately forty-nine miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The
site is near Bernardo and is recognizable by the overhead structure of an
PLA TEA U 143
old-style bridge over the Rio Puerco, where it then was crossed by a
former roadway of U.S. Highway N o . 85, now modernized and re-routed.
The area is wide-swept, sandy, flat, almost bare of vegetation but sprinkled
rather generously with water-worn stones and small dark pebbles.
I had eaten, washed in the river and was about to return to my car when
my attention was attracted by the end of a small dark pebble protruding
through the sand; a pebble that was similar to, but perhaps not quite like
the others scattered about that had been the cause of luckless and almost
constant stooping for the past thirty minutes.
I nearly passed this one up, then bent my protesting back once more.
When I loosened the pebble from the soil I saw at once that it was a small
stony meteorite—a new one for the record books, since there was no
previous report of a find anywhere in that region. It had a reasonably fresh
appearance, the crust bearing some rust spots and stained by the soil to
a dark brown rather than black appearance.
Finding of this little aerolite, named Puente-Ladron, the size of a small
pecan and weighing less than eight grams, was one of the great thrills of
my life. I had found other meteorites, but this was the first of only two
that I came across in the course of my habitual scouting wherever I might
be, and in areas where no meteorites previously were known to have
fallen. About ten years later, in a rock-strewn field near Cottonwood,
Arizona, where I had walked out to examine some unusual piles of boul-
ders, I picked up a two-pound stony meteorite, the shape of a blunt
cucumber.
No further specimens have been found at either of these locations.
Because I believe that no stony meteorites penetrate our atmosphere
unbroken, that they all must shatter, I am sure other stones remain to be
found of the Puente Ladron and Cottonwood falls.
On a warm day in 1943 I became thirsty while driving near Wilmot,
Cowley County, Kansas, and as I passed a farmstead I noticed between the
house and the barn an old-fashioned hand pump with a tin can hanging
from it.
Without bothering to go to the house I went to the well and pumped
a canful of water. I was enjoying its cooling effect when I noticed a few
steps away, beneath some plum bushes, a rusty-looking stone. With my
thirst attended to, I stepped over and picked it up. It was an old, weathered
stony meteorite.
I approached the house and knocked. The man of the house was not at
home, but I showed the stone to the lady who came to the door, asking
if she knew anything about it. She appeared puzzled that I should be
interested in such a homely object. I told her it was a meteorite and asked
if perhaps her husband had spoken of it. She said that he had not and she
was sure he was not responsible for its being where I found it, for they
had rented the place only recently.
144 FIND A FALLING STAR
I asked to buy the stone, but she insisted that I take it along if it was
of any use to me. I gave her $5 for it.
In Bethune, Colorado, in 1941,1 recognized three meteorites mounted
on a cement wall in a rock garden, and I found the Abernathy, Texas,
stone in a rock garden while searching for meteorites of the Plainview fall.
Other meteorite finds that I made personally were at such sites of prior
discoveries as Beardsley and Haviland, Kansas; Plainview and Odessa,
Texas; Holbrook and Canyon Diablo, Arizona, and Xiquipilco in Mexico.
2
Just prior to the outbreak of war, a boyhood friend sent to me some
meteorites of a fall in 1938 at Pantar, Lanao, Philippine Islands, which he
had witnessed. He and his wife then were interned by the Japanese until
early 1945.
Herbert J. Detrick and I grew up on farms not far apart in Oklahoma.
Herbert was graduated somewhat earlier than I from McPherson College,
and had gone to teach in the Philippines in 1908. I followed his career
over the years as it was detailed in the college alumni bulletin. He and his
wife, Lula, both were successful teachers. Herbert was named supervising
teacher and assistant to the governor of Nueva Vizcaya Province, and
became governor of the province of Palawan in 1915. Later he managed
a large plantation and engaged in mining and lumbering, and in 1939 he
opened a hotel in Dansalan, Lanao, Mindanao Island.
On the sunny morning of June 16, 1938, the rice stood lush and green
on the hills of Lanao, and the people of the province went about their usual
business; storekeepers opened their doors, housewives instructed their
cooks for the marketing; students scurried to their classrooms and the
native Moro farmers bent over their rice fields.
Suddenly there were strange explosive sounds from the sky, and then
an object was observed for at least two minutes as it came from the east,
emitting ringlets of smoke, and then ended its passage with a violence of
explosions and vibrations and a spreading dark cloud that persisted for
more than a half hour.
Excellent photographs of the cloud were obtained. At the village of
Pantar, the Moros in their rice fields saw more than the smoking object
and the great cloud; they saw fiery objects with tails of smoke shooting out
from the cloud and many small objects actually fall into the fields, from
which sixteen meteorites were recovered later from depths of up to twenty
inches. At the same time, a pattering like hail sounded on the galvanized-
iron roofs of several houses in the neighborhood.
I read in the news accounts that Detrick was tracing down and collecting
the meteorites of the Pantar fall. I wrote to him and was surprised to
receive the reply, "Believe it or not, I've been collecting these stones for
PLA TEA U 145
you." H e , too, had been reading the alumni bulletin. I sent him instruc-
tions as to how and what data to gather with the stones and for a year or
two he worked in his spare time, surveying, drawing maps, collecting
specimens. When finally he sent me his collection of thirteen stones not
long before Pearl Harbor, he instructed that I do as I pleased with them,
keeping what I wanted, selling others if I wished.
After Pearl Harbor, when it was evident there would be invasion of the
Philippines, we decided simply to hold the Pantar meteorites in safe
storage. We had no word of the Detricks' fate. When the Islands were
liberated by MacArthur, still we learned nothing except that people of the
Pantar area had been imprisoned. Finally, in the summer of 1945, we
learned the Detricks had been interned in Los Banos prison and had been
freed in February, 1945. They returned to the United States nearly
broken, emaciated and destitute. N o w we proceeded to sell their speci-
mens to help tide them over until they received partial settlement for their
holdings in the Islands. In appreciation, the Detricks added to our collec-
tion a representative from the Pantar fall.
5
The close of World War II meant a time for decision. My job with the
oil company was at an end. After an interruption of four and one-half
years, we were ready to go back to meteorites full time. Addie and I had
made up our minds to leave the museum in Denver before I entered into
wartime occupations, but our plans, like the individual hopes of everyone
else, had been set aside until war's end.
J. D. Figgins, who as director of the museum had arranged the terms
of my curatorship with the museum's board of trustees, had a high interest
in meteorites. Figgins had served as Admiral Peary's right-hand man on
the three expeditions by which were recovered and transported the three
great Greenland meteorites put on display at the Hayden Planetarium in
New York. During Figgins' leadership the museum participated in a
number of my field projects. This arrangement, during a period when my
field program brought forth more meteorites than were being found by
all other institutions throughout the world, rewarded the museum with a
rapid growth in its own collection. Dr. Figgins retired in 1936.
His successor was Dr. Alfred M. Bailey, whose scientific and field
interests lay in other lines. Under the stewardship of Dr. Bailey, the
Denver museum, already recognized as one of the finest and most beauti-
ful in the country, expanded and improved. Also, its emphasis shifted
somewhat in reflection of his interests as one of the leading bird men of
the country and a respected collector of bird and mammalian exhibits from
many parts of the world. I was invited to stay on as curator but otherwise
146 FIND A FALLING STAR
turns up in which case we should like half. We like to keep a few pieces
around to show or give to friends and we are getting pretty low on them
now."
In practice, we divided all specimens we recovered on a basis of weight,
a fourth going to the Barringers.
By April of 1946 we had been in touch with the Tremaine group also
and had been given permission to undertake an extensive survey for which
funds again had come from the American Philosophical Society, which
had contributed $250 toward the $1000 cost of the 1939 research.
We settled in our trailer under tall Ponderosa pines at the foot of Mt.
Elden, east of Flagstaff. Our younger daughter, Margaret, finished college
in June and decided to spend the summer with us. We had a grand time,
frequently visiting the crater and searching for small meteorites, under
terms of our written permission from the Barringers' Standard Iron Com-
pany and our verbal understanding with the Bar T Bar ranch. The search
was tedious and not very rewarding at first, but gradually we became more
efficient. Margaret found the largest specimen we recovered that summer
—a two-pound iron that she pulled excitedly from the soil by one protrud-
ing corner. Any recall of that summer brings to my mind a picture of
Margaret, on her knees, digging like a dog after a ground squirrel. She
had called to us, but couldn't take time to look up from her digging. She
had found an iron of several ounces in a little ditch and by scratching
uncovered a larger one and then a third, as I remember. She had the best
luck of the day, and of the season for that matter. We became so enthralled
with the search that we made many trips to the crater, a distance of forty
miles. Each of us carried a magnet mounted on the end of a cane. By this
means we could test an object without stooping to pick it up. If it clung
to the magnet it was either oxide or a metallic meteorite. The oxide was
meteoritic also but had been altered through weathering. The oxide chips
were many times as numerous as the metallic fragments, or "irons."
All in all, we collected about ten pounds during the summer, mostly of
the order of a tenth of an ounce in size. When I reported to Brandon
Barringer, he merely shrugged.
"Keep it!" he told me.
We were maintaining records of the sizes and distribution of these small
iron meteorites about the rim and extending plain. Later in the summer,
Ab Whelan, who had performed magnetometer work for me in New
Mexico, came from Artesia to conduct a magnetometer survey in the
crater environs, a project that unfortunately was never completed and that
gave no definite indications of remaining large masses under the soil.
Prior to the war we had discussed with members of the Barringer family
our hope of moving into the area and had talked of establishing a museum
on the very rim of the crater on some kind of partnership arrangement.
We could not seem to convince them that the plan was workable, but in
PLA TEA U 149
the summer of 1946, when further discussions were undertaken with the
Barringers, and with spokesmen for the Tremaines' Bar T Bar ranch,
which surrounded the Barringer property, we were surprised to learn that
their planning had progressed to the point where architectural sketches
had been prepared for a building of striking design, hanging over the rim
and balancing inward over the crater bowl. Signs and circulars had been
prepared.
Burton Tremaine and I laid our cards on the table. He warned that they
had the capability of going into the business alone and driving us out since
they had the power to outdo us in advertising and could set up a larger
institution. I pointed out in turn that it would be impossible for them to
obtain another collection like ours and that our museum would in no way
compete with or obstruct their tourist trade.
From our point of view, the meeting ended on a note of encourage-
ment. We felt that now we were in a position to go ahead independently
or cooperatively, but we had full confidence that once having proved
ourselves we would be offered a permanent place in the plans for the
crater rim. However, a divergence of views arose and eventually we went
our separate ways. The Barringers and Tremaines operated for a time
much as in the past, but ultimately built a handsome structure at the crater,
where their lure to tourists was a closeup view of the meteor crater. They
hoped to derive income which would support further exploration for the
great mass they still believed to lie beneath the earth.
By the end of summer of 1946 we had leased a building on Highway
66 and were ready to establish our museum, where our appeal was to
persons interested in learning something about meteorites by exposure to
a fine collection and educational lectures and materials.
t
had there not first existed the meteorite crater. We felt that we could do
without police protection. We could do without neighbors. We could get
along without society and entertainment. Our location pleased us, but left
us no choice. We had to get along without many accepted features of
civilization.
In about 1930 or 1932, when its situation was even more isolated, our
building had been erected by the bare hands of one white man and the
help of some local Indians. The floor was laid with flagstone and although
it was a little rough, I always thought it beautiful and practical. The walls
were thick, but the native stone had been laid originally with the red mud
of the hill on which the building stood. When the first heavy rain came,
much of the mud washed out and the whole structure threatened to fall
apart, whereupon its builder recognized his error and attempted to fill the
resultant voids with good cement. This rendered the walls substantial
enough, but additional labors never succeeded in making the structure
waterproof, as we were to see later.
We signed our lease, parked our trailer in the back yard and arranged
for expansion of the plumbing facilities to accommodate visitors. The
landlord dug a well and installed a water tank. We cleared everything out
of the building, polished our picture windows and hung new Venetian
blinds across them. Then we climbed into our 1942 Chevrolet and headed
for Denver to bring back our meteorites.
Our idea was big, our plans were big and our risks were large. As had
been the case so often before we were striking out on an untried course.
We had not heard of a museum of meteorites anywhere, much less one
located on a lonely highway hundreds of miles from any heavily populated
center and twenty and forty miles from the two closest towns.
We received no very great encouragement from any of our friends,
though we were flooded with good wishes which might have been re-
ceived more enthusiastically had they communicated conviction that our
venture would succeed.
One friend of ours, in particular, an attorney, baffled me by his parting
comment. Respected, successful, philanthropic in his interests, this man
had helped me with free legal advice on occasion. Now he listened sympa-
thetically to my plan and asked a number of pertinent questions. He
offered assistance if it should be needed and said his final words in fatherly
tones:
"Now, don't you let those people down there hurt you."
As I walked to the elevator I pondered his words, repeated them to
myself, trying to accept his warning as a joke.
With or without bright forecasts of success, we had made the only
choice we could see open to us. Once more we broke all formal ties and
put our reliance on ourselves.
Dr. Bailey the new museum director expressed appreciation for my
152 FIND A FALLING STAR
The Hokanson family, friends from Flagstaff, had driven out to visit us
and for three hours Elmer Hokanson, the driver, the Indian and I, with
assorted help from the ladies and children, worked until we had unloaded
and carried inside some five tons of meteorites. In addition to all 189
crates, bags and boxes, we unloaded the several large show cases from the
museum.
There remained about three tons of heavy irons, including one weigh-
ing 1,406 pounds that had been shipped without crating. These we simply
rolled out of the van into the yard.
The unloading went fairly well, and as we approached the finish things
looked brighter. The sky was brightening also. This was the evening of
October 9, 1946, a notable date in the history of meteorites and as-
tronomy for a reason more profound than the moving of our collection.
All over the planet men were alerted for the earth's probable encounter
with a swarm or stream of meteorites on this evening. The Giacobinnid-
Zinner comet had passed eight days earlier, leaving a trail of debris
through which our earth must pass. The Hokansons had planned to enjoy
an evening of meteor-watching with us in the desert; the show already had
begun during the final forty-five minutes of our unloading chore.
We were a wilted, tired lot when finally we spread blankets on the
ground, turned our eyes to the sky and munched sandwiches the women
had prepared. We appointed a timekeeper and began counting. The num-
ber of meteors per minute climbed gradually from twenty-six in a minute
to thirty, to thirty-six, to forty. As the tempo of meteor flashes across the
sky increased, we recorded counts of sixty, seventy, eighty. Once the
count passed the hundred mark.
Although the majority were rather small there were numerous of first
and second magnitude and some even brighter. We noted at least a dozen
that were more than twice as bright as Venus at her best seasons.
The celestial display of October 9 was interpreted by us as a fitting
prelude to the opening of our museum. And it could be said truthfully that
some three tons of meteorites fell within view of our meteorite museum
during the Giacobinnid-Zinner shower. It was quite an opening event.
Billy, the little Indian who had come along with the truck, weighed
about 100 pounds and was about the size of an average twelve-year-old,
but what he lacked in strength he made up with willingness. When it came
time for the truck to leave he didn't want to go with it, and insisted on
staying with us.
There we were, in the middle of a desert, and Billy's only reference was
the driver of the truck that had brought him off the highway. The driver
could not tell us much, but we could not very well get rid of Billy, or at
least we had not the heart to, for he had worked well and asked nothing
but shelter. We came to the conclusion that he could be of great help to
us in getting our material unpacked and in order, so we let him stay. He
A NEW LEASE 155
proved to be a good worker. Things went along all right for Billy until
a sign construction crew brought liquor onto the premises. This, it turned
out, along with an inclination to dependency, was Billy's weakness.
The first days on Highway 66 were crowded with painfully laborious
tasks of shifting, uncrating, lifting, unwrapping, placing, labeling, rear-
ranging. My arms ached, for it seemed as though all 16,000 pounds of
meteorites had to be moved two or three times before they found a
permanent resting place.
Billy washed down the interior walls and painted them. The front
veranda was stacked high with boxes for storage, the museum room was
crowded with display cases and specimens helter-skelter, the living quar-
ters were full of furniture waiting placement, dishes overflowed the cup-
boards and kitchen utensils cluttered the drainboard. The plumbers, who
were to have finished the day after we left for Denver, still hadn't finished
when we got back. Washbowls and toilets decorated the back yard. O u r
trailer seemed a haven of refuge. .
Billy unpacked so many odds and ends of dishes and knickknacks that
he shook his head.
"Why don't you live like the Indians, then you don't have so much
work."
When he got a few dollars ahead, Billy caught a ride into town. For a
time we knew nothing of him, but he returned later, only to disappear and
reappear from time to time. Usually he came only to pay friendly visits.
We would let him work if we needed him but never hired him again
except on a day to day basis. Once he wrote from Oklahoma, explaining
that he had been in the hospital, and asked for bus fare to Arizona. We
sent him the money. He came, visited and went on his way. Again we had
word from Denver, where he had given our name as his only friendly
reference. We did as much as we felt was advisable for him or for us, but
eventually lost track of him, holding only a hope that he prosper wherever
he might be.
As soon as a considerable part of the collection was housed under glass
we decided to open our doors. All the major specimens were in place
except Hugoton, its 770 pounds still secure in a plaster jacket. The derrick
and hoist were set up ready to finish the job. All the big irons from Canyon
Diablo had been placed on a central platform where they made a fine focal
point.
Visitors had been coming up the hill ever since we arrived, approaching
our door or peering through the windows, and on October 19 we put up
our little sign, " O p e n . "
This was our first taste of serving the public, of being on the inside of
the counter rather than standing outside to be served. We were to find that
such service sometimes can grow tiresome, that some people can be rude,
and that we could burn with indignation at actions we considered to be
15 6 FIND A FA LUNG STAR
Coyotes sang regularly from nearby stations and our dog could chase
rabbits any time she chose. We had other animal neighbors. O n e morning
I came out after breakfast to unlock the front door. The mechanical cash
register rested on a counter that ended against the wall about two feet to
the side of the door. I undid the padlock and turned to go back when an
odd, indefinite image of the cash register and the adjoining wall seemed
caught in my memory.
The roof above the door was supported by a log pillar that branched
at head height. Had I seen something strange there? I turned to look.
Draped across the register keys and then spanning the two-foot gap to the
fork in the log pillar, from where his beady eyes stared at me, was a huge
bull snake. His tail dangled from the "Total" key about eight inches. I
could not resist calling Addie to come see if there was anything wrong
with the cash register. She did not appreciate the joke.
Once Addie met a large king snake on the tower stairs, and several times
we dealt with rattlers. During one of Margaret's visits with us I had
stepped outside the kitchen door as she and Addie returned from Wins-
low. They stopped the car just beside our dog Blondie's house. When
Margaret opened the car door, Blondie rushed in between her and the
little house, barking fiercely. Margaret was a favorite of Blondie and we
couldn't understand the dog's action. Blondie wouldn't be persuaded to
withdraw. She kept ducking her head under her house as if to sniff under
it. Finally we were convinced that she sensed danger. We lifted the dog
house and there lay two rattlesnakes. Blondie dispatched them furiously.
Some of the small but dangerous scorpions were found occasionally.
When Shorty, a ranch hand, was replacing railroad ties that roofed our
"garage-workshop" he came across numerous six-inch centipedes. When
we left the desert after several years to move our museum to a new
building in Sedona, in Oak Creek Canyon, the last farewell was given by
a rattlesnake flashing its head in and out of a chink in the flagstone wall
just opposite to the doorknob of the kitchen door as we were ready to lock
up for the last time.
Half the tourists who drove up our hill would read our little sign listing
admission fees of twenty-five cents for adults and fifteen for children, then
turn and leave. Some would only look from the car and then drive on.
Some would drive in, around the building and out without stopping at all.
A few would come in without reading the sign and then stalk out when
fees were mentioned.
In spite of this, the number of customers our first day totaled sixty, and
most seemed well pleased. Admissions increased steadily, over all, though
there were occasional days when the number would drop to a dozen or
less. Once in a while the number surpassed a hundred.
As spring opened up the flow of traffic increased and the hours of
daylight lengthened. We were encouraged enough by our volume of
158 FIND A FALLING STAR
Once in a while it was difficult to draw the line between "paying visitor"
and "guest," but most of our friends recognized that we were in the
somewhat perilous business of making a living by exhibiting our collection
and they supported our endeavor while they brightened our days with
their visits.
The closing of books the first twelve months of operation showed more
than 33,000 paid admissions. The visitors represented every state in the
Union and forty-three foreign countries. There had been classes from
fifteen colleges and high schools, a few groups of scientists and several
other miscellaneous travel groups. We had distributed more than 5,000
books and pamphlets.
Three- to five-minute lectures were presented throughout the day. Ad-
ditional attentions—often half-hour lectures—were afforded to groups or
particularly interested visitors. At invitation, I had spoken before numer-
ous schools and clubs in neighboring Arizona towns.
Casual mention one day of a fireball the evening before brought reports
from two parties present in the museum who had witnessed the same
fireball from 300 miles apart, one headed west and the other east. Thus,
quite by accident, we discovered that our location was well suited to
receiving reports on fireballs. We would post a bulletin and could expect
additional reports from visitors within a few hours.
Our museum was small, the collection large. It was organized to include
illustrative exhibits to demonstrate seventeen aspects of meteorites and
related phenomena:
1) Classification. We were able to display most of the eighty known
varieties of meteorites.
2) Surface features and problems of air resistance at high velocities.
3) Structure of stony meteorites and their bearing on the origin of
meteorites.
4) Structure of metallic meteorites as related to chemical composition
and possible bearing on origin.
5) Shapes of meteorites, with 3,000 specimens available for study by
interested researchers.
6) Disruption of aerolites during flight and effect on total weight of
annual accretion.
7) Approximate frequency of "shooting stars."
8) Distribution of meteorites of a shower and significance relative to
magnitude of parent mass.
9) Nature and cause of disruptions.
10) Relation of depths of penetration by various members of a shower.
11) Average probable composition of meteorites in space relative to
fireball phenomena, arrival on the soil, and in comparison with
composition of the earth.
12) Meteoritic oxides and their importance to astronomy and geology.
13) Lunar craters and meteorites.
160 FIND A FALLING STAR
14) Lunar craters and tektites. (strange blobs of glass that are found only
in certain locations on earth and whose origins still are in doubt.)
15) Ballistical implications in the forms of certain meteorites.
16) Influence of meteorites on the lives of primitive peoples.
17) Meteorite craters—their present known distribution, the probable
abundance of concealed craters, their geological significance and
relation to regional mineralization.
One day a man stepped to the cashier's window and with a skeptical
expression paid his admission, then came inside. He glanced about, read
several of the monitor cards posted on the walls, examined the case nearest
him, then turned to the desk.
"I'd like to call my wife who is out in the car. It is evident you have
something worth while here."
The two of them examined the displays. Finally the man turned again
to me.
"Is this a state-supported or government-supported institution?"
I told him that it was privately owned, privately operated.
"Well, how was such an enormous collection ever assembled?"
This question, for which an answer involved some brief resume of the
story of my life, came to us repeatedly during the fourteen years we
operated the museum.
In only three cities of the United States were comparable exhibits to be
seen—Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. Even in these great
institutions—The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; the
American Museum of Natural History; and the United States National
Museum—there were no similarly extensive presentations demonstrating
significance, distribution, varieties, surface features, effects of weathering;
nor was there a competent guide to explain and answer questions.
I fully understood the visitor's puzzlement. From only a slightly differ-
ent angle I had puzzled over the meteorite problem thirty-five years
before. Only what had puzzled me was not the presence of a great collec-
tion before me, but the lack of such a collection in any of the institutions
wherein I had studied or taught.
Aside from light, meteorites furnished the astronomer, during those
years, his most intimate contact with the universe surrounding our tiny
planet. Yet a man might have earned a doctor's degree in astronomy in
almost any American university without hearing a single lecture or read-
ing even a chapter on the subject of meteorites. Meteorites constituted the
sole material evidence of the modus operandi of earth growth, yet one might
earn a doctor's degree in geology without ever learning even to recognize
a meteorite in the field or laboratory.
This situation was only to some extent ameliorated by Sputnik.
We were convinced that in putting our collection on public view and
charging a fee we were serving a purpose beyond our personal needs for
A NEW LEASE 161
nessed their fall, had a great yearning for knowledge concerning these
lumps of rock and iron that occasionally plunk themselves down on our
earth. When I could not find an institution to support such an aim, I did
what I conceived as the next best thing. I set up my own museum, and
since I couldn't levy taxes, nor establish an academic course and charge
tuition, I imposed admission fees, feeling not much different than I had
during the sixteen years when I taught in colleges or universities and went
monthly to the business office to pick up my check.
2
When I was combining study with teaching at McPherson College, a lad
used to hang around my laboratory a lot, out of a burning interest in the
work we were doing with bugs and birds and small mammals. He hung
around so much that sometimes he got a little in the way, but he was a
likeable kid and one day when he was underfoot I tried a diversionary
tactic.
"Take this reading glass and go out and study that ant hill there in the
yard," I told him.
The task so interested him that he spent most of the rest of the day on
his knees, glass in hand, watching the comings and goings of those tiny
communal creatures.
That boy was John Hilton, the now noted artist, naturalist, author. The
Hiltons moved from McPherson not long after my first acquaintance with
John, and I didn't see him again until many years later. By then he had
made his name in the artists' and writers' world, and when I read one of
his articles in the Saturday Evening Post I determined to look him up,
wondering if he was the youngster I'd known in McPherson. In 1938 we
visited him in his desert studio in California.
"You know," he told me, "you are responsible for all of my interest
in science." And he reminded me of the ant hill.
John Hilton described for me a brilliant fireball he had seen streak
across the horizon. He told me excitedly how, while driving on a lonely
road, he had seen the nocturnal landscape rendered as bright as day, and
how the shadows of the sage brush rotated as the great light passed. Then
he had cursed himself for not thinking to use the camera that hung from
a neck strap.
"Well," I said, "you are an artist. Paint me a picture of that and I'll trade
you meteorites for it." That picture hangs in our home. It also appears on
the jacket of this book.
John did a lot of scouting about the desert and, recognizing a possible
meteorite finder when I saw one, I coached John on what to look for and
how to look. In the following years he sent me a report from time to time,
but until 1948 none of his leads proved good. Then John wrote to me
A NEW LEASE 163
from Mexico that he had found a meteorite. He added that he had checked
the maps and lists of meteorite finds carried in my book Our Stone-Pelted
Planet and he was sure this was a new meteorite, since it was 200 miles
from the nearest listed location.
When I wrote John to say how delighted I was at his news, I cautioned
him not to be too sure it was indeed a new fall.
I had a hunch about his meteorite, and when I saw him I told him the
story. Back in the 1890's when the Arispe meteorite first was found about
forty miles south of Cananea, several sizable masses were brought out, and
there was a tale among the old-timers that there was another big piece,
one that had been kept for a time in a local shop, then loaded by its owner
on a burro and taken away. They thought the meteorite had been taken
to Magdalena. On my first hunt for Arispe irons in 1927 I had followed
the burro and its burden as far as Magdalena, but had lost track there. This
was half way to where John Hilton found his meteorite, and I had an idea
his might be the donkey-borne Arispe specimen.
John and I cut off a little corner and polished and etched it—and there
was the story. The structural markings of a meteorite are just like a
signature, and this was Arispe, sure enough. John got more kick out of
playing detective than he had out of finding the meteorite in the first place,
and he promptly wrote another magazine story, this one about structural
patterns of meteorites.
Hilton's meteorite had been used as an anvil for thirty-five years on a
Mexican hacienda, mounted among the roots of an overturned stump. It
weighs 269 pounds and bears a natural flat surface, eleven by five inches.
The Arispe anvil piece is testimonial to the toughness of natural meteoritic
steel; though pounded on for a generation, it shows no hammer marks.
Several meteorites have served as anvils on farms. O n e of the Tucson irons
was used by a professional blacksmith for this purpose for a number of
years. Another homely need was filled by the Estacado stone, which was
employed as a wash stand outside a kitchen door before it was sold for
$1000.
No meteorite collector ever had better luck working near the Arizona
crater than the late O. J. (Monte) Walters. Monte had a sharp eye and a
persistent mind. Sometimes I thought he must in addition have a special
instinctive perception of nearness of meteoritic material, for I never knew
him to return from a collecting trip empty-handed.
In the early post-war days, surplus mine detectors were easily available,
and I obtained a couple of these for use in locating buried irons. For me
their performance was erratic.
We used an M 625 standard war surplus detector. This detector consists
of an electric coil carried in a disk at the foot of a rod and connected with
batteries borne in a pack. The electric current develops a magnetic field
164 FIND A FALLING STAR
about the coil, and this field is affected by ordinary soil in such a way as
to produce a faint steady hum in an earphone worn by the searcher. When
a metallic object is passed over, the steady hum suddenly intensifies to a
whistle or buzz, sometimes almost a bark. Unfortunately, the detector
cannot distinguish the difference between a meteorite and a tin can, a
piece of wire, a bottle cap, nail or any other object made of ferrous metal.
The detector is sensitive to metallic meteorites of average size—about a
half pound—to a depth of ten inches, and can indicate a two-pound iron
buried as deeply as two feet.
Carrying and manipulating the machine requires some physical effort,
but more than that its effectiveness depends in large part on aptitude of
the operator. Monte Walters had a knack with these instruments. When
he went out with a machine, the thing would hum busily, then go into a
gleeful buzz that had Monte wielding his shovel at frequent intervals.
In 1946, the persons most familiar with the Arizona crater informed me
that the land had been pretty well stripped of meteorites. One veteran
hunter told me he personally had covered every foot of a zone three miles
in width adjoining and encircling the crater pit with a metal detector. I
did not doubt this Arizonan's integrity, but I judged him fallible. My
experience with detectors, and my calculations years before of man hours
necessary to cover such and such an area foot by foot, told me it would
take about thirty-two years of steady searching, eight hours daily, to cover
the area he described.
Monte Walters gave me no such picture of the "worked-out" nature of
the crater vicinity.
"I can still find meteorites," he told me.
So I agreed to take off his hands at the then going price per pound all
that he could find. I had taken on a tough obligation, because Monte
proceeded to deliver. Sometimes it was difficult to keep our side of the
agreement, and Monte would have to wait for his money, but he never
complained and never doubted. During fifteen years he delivered to our
museum approximately 4,000 pounds of meteorites, comprising some
12,000 specimens, for which we paid him a dollar to ten dollars a pound.
Walters had spent his early years as a cowhand in the neighborhood of
the crater and had become familiar with the distribution of meteorites
around the rim. Our agreement covered hunting on state land, and he
searched on several sections on which we had filed mining claims, and on
two or three others on which he had filed at my suggestion.
Walters was a fine friend and, in my scale of values, he was a great man.
His devotion to his family, particularly his relationship to his sons, was
admirable. Deer hunting, fishing and meteorite hunting were the week-
end recreational activities for the boys and their Dad. During all of the
many hours that I spent in their presence I never heard a cross word
spoken. Monte always was firm and knew his own mind, but he also
A NEW LEASE 165
respected the minds of his sons, and their admiration and respect for him
was almost worshipful. Monte died in a veterans' hospital July 8, 1961.
With a staff of two to four persons besides ourselves, I had time in 1947
to pursue the work at the crater under my permit. Despite the estimates
that the great amount of collecting done during the past four or five
decades had nearly stripped the environs of meteorites, we were anxious
to make a thorough search.
A retired navy captain guided us to our most efficient metal detector.
Captain Harold Draeger, M.D., had taken up meteorites as a hobby in his
retirement. He came to our museum with a mine detector which he
wished to try out at the crater. The first day he visited our museum I had
a firm commitment that prevented my accompanying him, so Addie joined
the captain and his wife on an excursion to the crater. I designated a
location where I thought he might find something, and off they went.
When they returned that evening there was great excitement. The
captain had located meteorites faster than the two women could dig them
out from depths of a few inches; and when the catch was spread out on
the floor of our living quarters we were indeed an excited group.
We at once purchased a detector like Captain Draeger's. Don Thomp-
son was a good operator, and we kept it busy. He and I took turns and
set out to give the ground a good going over with the expectation of being
able to furnish a useful map of distribution of fragments.
3
For our first year on the desert we were busy and buoyed up by seeming
success.
In the fall of 1947 I chased once more after the Danforth puzzle in the
Maine woods, but returned feeling that perhaps it should simply be
marked off my book for good.
During a long Sunday afternoon off, Addie and I drove to Long Valley
and came back over the Mogollon Rim through a hundred miles of dense
forest where occasional patches of aspen gleamed like candles in the dark.
We knew there were plans to change the course of Highway 66. Stories
about the impending move of the old and dangerous narrow two-lane
road, with its dips, decaying shoulders, and high incidence of traffic acci-
dents, carried changing rumors as to the path the new highway would
take. Finally it was settled that the new road indeed would bypass us,
running a half mile away and to our rear, with only a dirt access road to
our hill.
Still, the time for this happening seemed far ahead; besides, we were
scouting possible sites for a new museum building, nor had we yet given
up hope for an eventual institute and home on the crater rim.
Power company poles had begun marching over the desert in our
166 FIND A FALLING STAR
direction, although they were not coming close very fast and we still
depended on gas and kerosene light.
We hired a new, temporary employe. One of our visitors, Fred Boyer,
showed so much interest in the place that when we found he was footloose
we simply asked him, on a hunch, if he would stay for a while to help. Fred
and Don put in some much-needed improvements. They hauled away
rocks and dirt to make a driveway, set up parking barriers and built a
garage of unique construction: a simple arrangement of old square-
stemmed telegraph poles, purchased from Western Union, unloaded
along the railroad and trucked in to us.
The visitors' count for November, 1947, surpassed 1,100. Our mail
orders included a welcome $500 order for meteorites to be used in
nuclear studies. Average daily attendance of sixty to ninety persons, with
sales of literature and specimens, brought us, after sales and admission
taxes, something over thirty dollars on an average day. Out of this we had
to support ourselves and a staff, pay operating expenses, and retire heavy
indebtedness.
Don and Ruth had begun preliminary work on an illustrated catalog of
our collection, which was intended to be an historical account of its ac-
cumulation as well as a listing of its contents.
We began to dream that perhaps our museum would grow enough that
it could support a research department manned mostly by college students
and new graduates under one or two trained supervisors. Many of the
researches, those involving chemistry for example, could be farmed out
to other institutions.
Perhaps our glasses were rose-colored. We learned that the custodian
at the crater rim had complained about our collecting, but we continued
working in areas for which we had written permission. We began to notice
that other parties were searching the same sector of the rim without filing
the reports that previously had been made regularly to us for our records
of any hunting done by visiting collectors and scientists. My map could
have no meaning unless all finds by all parties were reported. Finally we
abandoned the map, but continued to work the rim under our permit. The
permit was renewed, for six months, ending in October of 1948. Addie
and I filed for mineral rights on some of the intervening sections of state
land within the cattle ranch. We staked claims and laboriously built up
stone monuments to mark them.
By summer of 1948 the power line still had not reached us. The cost
was going to be high. We installed a Wincharger—another mechanical
device to watch after—and stored its rows of batteries in our telegraph-
pole garage to p^»wer our own electricity. The Wincharger provided
direct current, not alternating; Addie still couldn't use her electric iron
and washing machine. The new highway snaked closer and closer to us and
to the by-pass that would maroon our museum.
A NEW LEASE 167
All of our efforts to have our program taken over by some respected
institution had failed. When time seemed to be running out for us, we had
come with great reluctance to the conclusion that either we must abandon
our program and our dream or find a way to make our great collection
support the program. When we decided that the environs of the great
meteorite crater would be the best place to try, we had faced the fact that
this probably would be our last move, that we would spend the rest of our
days on the desert. What final disposition we would make of the collection
was yet to be decided. When we had moved to Arizona, I had thought
it probable that ultimately it would become the property of the Society for
Research on Meteorites. It was my hope that such also would be the final
custodianship of the great crater, although I had no intimation of this
possibility from the owners.
My interests had been bound closely with those of the Society, and my
association with its leadership had been close. I did not foresee that time
would change this situation, nor that a space race eventually would trans-
form the collection into a negotiable asset.
There were days when there was little traffic on the road below and less
coming up our hill; there were days when heavy traffic passed on the
highway—and passed right on.
Many cars continued to come up our hill only to swing away and go
down again without a stop. Others brought the kind of troubles that
persons who deal with tourists complain of everywhere: visitors interested
only in restrooms, which often were abused badly; careless drivers who
dislocated or smashed the parking barriers or who swept through our back
yard with no care for our privacy.
And there were those occasions we so regretted when a visitor would
pay, then obviously take no interest in our exhibits and our story. We had
to follow some sort of established policy; if we didn't collect at the door,
we couldn't collect even $10 in a day; but we hated having anyone leave
feeling money had been misspent. Fortunately, those who took the time
to look and listen seemed to go away pleased.
Ab Whelan, the geophysicist who had made magnetometer surveys in
New Mexico oil fields for me, came to conduct instrumental researches
for sizable meteorite fragments in the environs of the crater.
I had suggested to Ab long ago that with all his field work he undoubt-
edly had encountered a meteorite at one time or another without being
aware of it.
Ab never had reported anything. But when he came to do the crater
work he told me he had found a "big old rock" that he had thrown into
his pickup truck and brought home to Artesia, but had just never gotten
around to writing to me about it. He said he didn't suppose it was any-
thing, but I told him to send me a sample when he got back to New
Mexico. He did so. His "big old rock" was a meteorite that weighed 167
168 FIND A FALLING STAR .
pounds. It had been resting in his yard for two years since he had found
it lying out on a deserted ranch, near what had been the foundation of a
house, not far from Acme, New Mexico. It was impossible to determine
whether the metorite had been brought in, or lay where it fell, but
searches failed to produce any further specimens.
We measured our days by changes in the weather and in the flow of
traffic, and by the ritual totaling of the cash register tape each evening.
Winds blew so fiercely that our signs were toppled more than once, the
garage roof had to be battened down and the trailer tied to keep it from
blowing over, and heavy meteorites were shoved against the doors to hold
them shut.
Electrical storms occasionally put our batteries out of order, leaving us
just enough power for one small light at night. In winter our water pipes
would freeze for a week at a time, thawing out on some evenings just
enough for us to draw and store the next day's water supply. Snows would
swirl about the building and drift the road up the hill so as to discourage
visiting by all but four or six people, who perhaps stopped chiefly for brief
refuge from the storm-driven highway.
On some days when slow traffic or bad weather brought a mere handful
of visitors through our doors, better than usual sales of specimens and
books would bring the total up to an average, or even record level; at
other times only our mail order business made the difference by which we
were able to survive.
During 1948 as compared to 1947, business all along Highway 66
seemed to be generally down, but for us, on the whole, it was better,
perhaps because we had established ourselves as a going concern, or
perhaps because 1948 brought us an unusually good press, with our
museum featured in several major magazines and on newspaper pages
throughout the United States and even abroad.
Because there was such a dip in business along the highway between the
heavy traffic of summer and the slack of winter, we decided for the winter
season of 1948 and 1949 that Addie and I would undertake a lecture-field
trip while Don and Ruth cared for the museum.
We headed for California to fill lecture engagements and enjoy a little
warm weather. We parked our trailer at Palmdale, California, one after-
noon and next morning found ourselves surrounded by twelve inches of
snow, with more coming down until there was an eighteen-inch blanket
over the Mojave Desert. I rearranged lecture dates on foot and by tele-
phone to accommodate the weather and it was three weeks before we
could move our trailer.
However, we had a pretty good winter among high schools, colleges
and rock clubs, the income from which combined with loans on two of my
insurance policies enabled us to carry the museum deficit and pay off a
$3,000 note. We spent five months in the Coachella Valley, the Mojave
A NEW LEASE 169
Desert, the San Joaquin and Inyokern Valleys. Our points of contact were
chiefly the mineral societies. In addition, we lectured to thousands of
school children, many of whom lived on farms and ranches or on the
desert and so had opportunity to observe and handle rocks.
We financed our travel by charging a small expense fee for lectures and
by sales of meteorite specimens and books. The cooperating mineral
societies received fifteen per cent of the proceeds for their own treasuries.
Our overhead of car expense—pulling the trailer and going off on chases
into rough country—was a burden on our margin of profit.
We returned to the museum the middle of March. Don and Ruth had
struggled through a pretty tough winter, but we all looked forward now
to the upswing in business and weather that spring should bring.
4
Early in 1949 came a press announcement that the University of New
Mexico henceforth was granted "exclusive rights" to conduct meteorite
surveys and to recover meteoritic materials at the Arizona crater. The
announcement was made jointly by the University, the Tremaines, and the
Barringers.
There were three separate contracts. The Barringers in theirs specified
a prohibition against activities that might deface scenic beauty of the crater
or damage permanently its scientific value.
The press announcement also mentioned that Dr. Otto Struve, presi-
dent of the American Astronomical Society, had compared the Arizona
crater with the site of a February, 1947, fall in Siberia, which he reported
had been turned into a national monument by the Russians.
From this time on I confined my work to such of the checkerboard
squares of state land sections in the environs of the crater as Addie and
I already had constructed our stone monuments on or would continue to
select for filing of mineral claims. At the time of the announcement I knew
I was being criticized for "commercializing" the subject of meteorites by
insisting that somehow I must collect a living wage from the thousands of
persons who were visiting our educational exhibit, hearing our lectures,
purchasing our literature and a few specimens. O u r collection of more
than 5,000 specimens representing 526 falls was made available every day
in the year over a period of years for the inspection of any and all persons
willing to pay twenty-five or fifty cents to make use of it. Reduced rates
were available to groups.
My signal offense seemed to be that our museum sold specimens to
collectors, to colleges, universities and museums. Also, on a much smaller
scale, we sold jewelry made from the small nickel-iron meteorites we had
retained from among those collected around the Arizona meteorite crater.
In no case did we allocate for jewelry any specimen for which there could
FIND A FALLING STAR
be any conceivable scientific need, nor did the jewelry constitute more
than a very small item in our volume of sales.
A collection of meteorites properly labeled constitutes a more reliable
source of information than any printed treatise on the subject. The shad-
ings are slight between the relative grades of scientific respectability repre-
sented in receiving a price for a cabinet specimen for a scientific collection,
and receiving royalties on a textbook.
Obviously, meteorites are too important scientifically and much too rare
to justify their general use for ornaments or any other commercial use. So
far in man's experience meteoritical material is several times more scarce
than gold, and it is possible that a greater tonnage of diamonds has been
recovered than the total of meteorites in all the museums of the world.
Because of their potential yield of information concerning the universe
outside the earth, all meteorites should be strictly preserved for educa-
tional and scientific purposes except in those rare instances where the
representative samples of a single fall exceed the demand by institutions
of learning.
In the vicinity of the Arizona crater so many nickel-iron meteorites were
recovered during the first three decades of the twentieth century that they
became practically a dead item in the museum supply houses of the coun-
try. On the other hand, they were commonly offered to tourists in souve-
nir houses along the highways of northern Arizona as mere curios. No one
ever will know how many thousands of these were sold between the time
of discovery of the crater in 1891 and 1946, when we began, in coopera-
tion with the crater owners, an effort to keep some kind of record of the
number of such specimens recovered and disposed of.
During 1946 we developed ways to mount some of the small meteorites
in the form of costume jewelry, sectioning and etching suitable specimens
and polishing others along contour lines. The process was tedious and
expensive, but it removed them from the "common rock" classification
which they carried when sold in the rough as souvenirs, at perhaps a
quarter each, most often to be tossed aside shortly and lost. A small
meteorite turned from a nondescript "rock" into a $6.00 jewelry item
surely would receive more care and attract more attention. Families of
scientists in particular seemed attracted to our unique jewelry. We pro-
vided a proper label and descriptive certificate so that each piece carried
with it a bit of knowledge that most certainly would be passed on to others.
The limited marketing of these small meteorites as jewelry and two
other types of jewelry created from meteorite products—metallic spher-
oids encased and polished in plastic, and bits of jet-black polished oxide
—may have made the general public more aware of meteorites than the
combined efforts of institutional departments of astronomy and geology.
How " p u r e " is institutional science? How "commercial" must a private
enterprise be? Every university employe, whether teacher or researcher,
A NEW LEASE 171
is paid a salary which is made possible for the most part either by taxpay-
ers' monies or by the contributions and endowments received by private
institutions. In spite of this support, these institutions charge enrollees
some sort of tuition or fees.
Sometimes I would wish that the critic of my "commercialism" could
be forced to spend a few weeks in my shop preparing paper weights, a pair
of bookends, or a series of specimens for some enthusiastic collector. O n e
simply cannot work with meteorites day after day without absorbing a lot
of information. Preparatory work upon an extensive series of specimens
constitutes a better textbook than has yet been written on meteorite struc-
tures.
If the order being filled is intended to serve as a study collection for
students, or as a general reference collection, its chief function will be
realized at its destination, where any number of individuals may be in-
structed by it. Nearly all of the contributions to meteoritical knowledge
in America during the nineteenth century emanated from the pens of men
who were associated with collections of meteorites. Could such collections
have been developed without a great amount of preparation and direc-
tion? Can such preparational activities be undertaken without there being
remuneration?
During the nineteen twenties and thirties I visited practically all of our
leading museums and universities to inspect a sufficiently wide variety of
specimens to meet my needs in respect to structure, classification and
identification, and especially in relation to my favorite problem, the sur-
face features of meteorites. One of the most impressive facts of these visits,
emphasized repeatedly during my explorations was this: Practically all of
the specimens in those collections, both great and small, had at some time
passed through the hands of Dr. Harry Ward of Rochester, N.Y. or Dr.
A. E. Foote, of Philadelphia, both of whom were out and out "dealers"
in minerals and meteorites.
Our "commercialism" differed from that of these men in one important
particular: Whereas they assigned research a minor and secondary role in
their program, it was given first place in ours.
Since our operations were limited strictly to meteorites and were of
necessity small, we seldom employed more than two persons. Several
thousand specimens of several hundred falls were cut and polished in our
laboratory. Each of those was inspected carefully under a hand lens, many
were examined under high-power microscopes. We etched more than a
thousand slices of nickel-iron meteorites. Many were re-polished and re-
etched for purposes of research. All specimens were checked and re-
checked by me personally. Important discoveries several times were made
during the course of preparing a pair of bookends or a paper weight from
one of the Canyon Diablo irons. A number of my scientific papers devel-
172 FIND A FALLING STAR
5
To all appearances the new road had been finished for some time by the
end of June, 1949, but it was not yet opened for traffic. We had become
accustomed to this situation; business was going along as usual. Then one
day Don and I were both on duty. The day had been going pretty well.
There came a lull and we were standing among the display cases discussing
something or other when one of us remarked about the lag.
"This has turned out to be a dull day. I wonder why."
I walked over to the northwest window. The new highway bore a
stream of traffic. The change had been anticipated, but when it came it was
hard to believe. Our records for that summer showed that beginning on
that day the income was just about cut in half.
There we were, landlocked in our desert, with the changed traffic
patterns eating away at our success. We still were badly in debt. Now it
was evident that we could not expect more than enough to pay the rent
and the living expenses of two people.
The work was enough to be arduous for two, but attendance was not
sufficient to carry four persons and expense. Reluctantly, with Don and
Ruth, we faced the fact that we just couldn't justify, nor carry, the added
expense of salaries for regular help. Don and Ruth returned to Denver,
and our remaining time on Highway 66 was faced largely alone. We grew
accustomed to caution about leaving the building alone even briefly, and
Addie and I regularly traded the chores of going into town or staying on
duty alone, and always arranged for someone to be at the museum when
we were to be gone together even for an afternoon or evening. We found
A NEW LEASE 173
reliable and interested persons who would care for the museum on week
ends or during more extended periods when we wished to be away for
field trips or lecture tours.
There were two reasons why we refused to give up. One of these was
a fact; the other was our old dream.
The fact was that we knew our collection represented great value and
that if placed on the market gradually it would be sufficient for us to live
on for the rest of our lives. We never had put any liens on the collection.
Our experience had convinced us that it could not be sold in its entirety
as a collection; nevertheless I knew its value and if worse came to worst
we could give up our dream. For we still dreamed of a meteorite institute
where such a collection as ours would supply information both to research-
ers and to the general public until this most interesting subject should find
a place in high school and college curricula.
Those were lonely and sober days. O u r entire lives had been committed
to this program. The venture had proven itself effective and had been
self-supporting. Nothing was being done anywhere in the world so far as
we knew that in even a small way duplicated our effort, and we had
expected to spend the remainder of our active years in this program. But
now we were under such worries and pressure that we feared our health
could not long stand up. I was having cold sweats at night. Bitterness had
been growing, and fear—something I had hardly known before.
In the summer of 1950 there was great activity on the crater rim as a
new building went up and huge signs advertising the crater blossomed all
along Highway 66.
We still were thinking of constructing a new building that would front
on the changed highway. We sought more and more to bolster our sliding
admissions income by sales of meteorites. Ward's Natural Science Estab-
lishment, our first large customer so many years ago, again undertook sales
on consignment to an extent that now was accounting for a third to a half
of our income. We were selling off duplicate materials, and were begin-
ning even to offer for sale specimens that heretofore we never would have
dreamed of letting go. At the same time we began to make efforts to find
a purchaser for all of our Nininger Collection, or for substantial divisions
of the whole.
Margaret returned to Arizona in the fall of 1949 and spent nearly a year
with us, assisting in final preparation of The Nininger Collection, the catalog
of our meteorites, published in 1950. By the time the Catalog reached
print we were despairing of our survival as an institution. We made up our
minds that if a buyer for the collection did not appear shortly following
publication of the Catalog, we would have to split the collection into
several sections to be sold separately, or close shop and dispose of it
piecemeal. Two things saved the museum from being closed. The first was
our inability to find a buyer for the collection. The second, the unexpected
174 FIND A FALLING STAR
but controlling factor, was that we found we could not set ourselves free
of our lease.
When we had not found a buyer by summer of 1950, we decided we
simply must quit; that at the end of the season we would store our collec-
tion and close the museum, sell enough meteorites to build ourselves a
home and somehow work out a new life.
O u r lease had been expensive to purchase, and we had been careful to
include a clause allowing either party to cancel on sixty-days notice; but
somehow the clause was left out of the final draft and Addie and I failed
to note its absence.
We sent our sixty-days notice only to be countered with a statement that
we would be bound by an automatic renewal provision, paying our
monthly rental whether we occupied the building or not, until July 1,
1953.
As in previous crises we tightened our belts. We did some close figur-
ing, changed our program here and there, cashed in one insurance policy
and borrowed on the others and made do.
Although, looking ahead into them, those next three years seemed
endless, in reality they were in some ways less difficult than the years
preceding, except for the continuing tensions that prevented our feeling
free to come and go at will without a constant presence at the museum.
Because business was lighter, the work was less, despite the fact we were
carrying it alone for the most part. By bringing in temporary help, we
were able to attend a number of important scientific meetings that were
welcome breaks in routine. Arrangements could be made easily when the
events were close at hand; when they occurred at great distance, I would
manage to line up lectures nearby in time and place to allay expenses, and
would carry specimens to sell or, where possible, follow up a report in the
area that might bring in a new specimen.
Frequently our museum was visited by scientists of national and interna-
tional repute who wished to examine our collection. Usually I would
accompany such guests on a visit to the crater to explain my most recent
researches.
I was beginning to have a whale of a time with these crater studies. Day
and night I worked with soil samples gathered at the crater, sifting and
sorting for hours at a time, with each operation adding a little more to the
solution I was formulating for the puzzle of what exactly had happened
out there on the desert eons ago. It seemed that I would never get through
my work at the crater; never had I been so busy in all my life.
The excitement and stimulation counteracted the tensions and problems
of our life. Growing scientific notice of what I was doing, and resulting
attention in the press, were reflected in the attitudes of townspeople and
seemed even to influence somewhat the flow of visitors to the museum.
No one regards what is before his feet; we
all gaze at the stars.
—Iphigenia. Quoted by
Cicero in De Divinatione.
11. DISCOVERY
Years before, when Dr. F. R. Moulton visited Denver in 1936 he and I
lunched together at one of the local hotels. Our talk turned to my book
Our Stone-Pelted Planet, published three years earlier.
"I see that you hold to the view that there is a big meteorite in the
bottom of the Arizona crater," Dr. Moulton remarked.
I replied that D. M. Barringer had decided so and that according to his
records such a mass had been encountered by drill.
Placing his hands on the edge of the table, Moulton leaned toward me
with a smile.
"Nininger, there cannot be a meteorite in that crater."
"Why not?"
He explained that he had investigated this whole matter mathematically
and had concluded that it was impossible for a mass of any such magnitude
as that which produced the crater to stop suddenly and remain intact. On
impact it would have to be transformed into gas; it would explode.
I admitted that Dr. Moulton had a much better right to an opinion than
I, but said I still believed the mass must be in the crater.
Moulton had been employed in 1929 by Mr. Barringer's organization
to give them a valid estimate of the tonnage of metal that they might
expect to recover in a proposed mining operation. The professional scien-
tists in the Barringer group had considered Moulton to be the man best
fitted to make such an estimate, which was to serve as a basis for seeking
the necessary financial backing for the project. These men had been think-
ing on the order of ten to twenty million tons of metal. When Dr. Moulton
theorized a mass of only three million tons at the most, perhaps as little
as fifty thousand tons, that could have survived the impact, the financial
sponsors panicked and withdrew their support.
Dr. Moulton did not tell me all of this background, which I learned
later. He only told me his conclusion.
176 FIND A FALLING STAR
facilities were not adequate for the complete examination which the sev-
eral types of material that we were collecting required. Such study would
have to await our move and the opening of our museum, the time for
which had been set for September.
When finally we got our collection moved into the old rock building
on Highway 66, there were months of installation problems even after we
opened, and to our gratification we found our time very much occupied
with caring for visitors. The research on crater materials still must wait.
When museum attendance reached the stage where we could employ
help, then all my spare time was devoted to research problems.
During the life of our permit to search we collected nearly 6,000
specimens from the outer slopes of the northeast sector of the crater rim.
Only a few of these weighed as much as ten pounds. The two largest
weighed fifteen and seventeen pounds. The average weight was about
four ounces.
In the course of collecting these small specimens we took numbers of
soil samples by means of a hand magnet mounted at the tip of a cane.
These magnetic soil samples were sealed in envelopes, marked by location
and set aside for study when time would permit.
After October, 1948, when withdrawal of my permissions for research
made it impossible to continue exhaustive and definitive collecting, I
concentrated my efforts on the alternate sections of public lands on which
we obtained rights, and also began to take out of storage the bags and
boxes of soil samples collected as far back as 1939 and laid away pending
time for analysis of their content.
In the sorting of fragments gathered during the magnetic rake survey
of 1939 we had discarded all material that would pass an eight-mesh
screen. As we sifted out and cast away this great bulk of fine particles, I
had begun to wonder whether perhaps we were culling the most impor-
tant part of our harvest, and so I had bagged up a goodly sample of the
discard for laboratory study and carried it back to Denver, but I had not
got around to examining it.
The greatest keys to my evolving theory about the crater were found
in my boxes of soil samples. I was beginning to be certain that neither I
nor anyone else had given to the soil in the environs of the crater the
careful attention deserved, and when I turned my attention to the small
particles of various descriptions that crowded the soil, the most exciting
avenues of exploration and speculation were opened.
When a sample of magnetics from the crater area is examined under a
lens, the view is of a confusing variety of particles of many shapes, colors
and description. Some shine, some are dull. Spherical particles are not
uncommon, nor are ovals, biscuit shapes, pear shapes, perfect droplets.
We had found that the hand magnet would pick up from ant hills richer
loads of the little pellets of rounded or oval shape; perhaps the ants tended
178 FIND A FALLING STAR
to favor the rounded or oval heavy grains in building their hills, but more
probably the wind blew away the lighter volcanic ash and left behind a
disproportionate amount of the heavier metallic grains.
Barringer and B. C. Tilghman in 1905 had reported finding an abun-
dance of small black magnetic particles in their work at the crater. Tilgh-
man described these as "blackish-gray" in color and of "torn, irregular"
shape; he stated this material was "absolutely universal over the whole
locality inside the hole and out for as far as observed, somewhat over two
miles from the hole."
The material constantly adhering to our magnets agreed with this de-
scription for the most part, but as I pored over the stuff, picking out
particles one at a time, I found some that did not conform. These were
rounded, gray or brown in color; they responded positively to nickel tests,
and when I attempted to grind them in a mortar, I found they had mallea-
ble metallic cores.
By early 1948 I had concluded that here was one of the condensation
products necessary to Moulton's explosion theory. In 1949,1 reported to
the American Philosophical Society the results of oxidation studies I had
made under a society grant: I described these metal-center pellets and also
the finding of oxide droplets, rich in nickel and black in color, but without
the metal centers. Continuing studies revealed other condensation parti-
cles—reticulated pellets consisting of soil and sand particles bound to-
gether by a reticulum of nickel-iron oxides, and globules of silica glass
coated with oxides.
When we first began studying these magnetics in the soil samples from
the crater area, the little metal-center pellets, with their coverings of sand
and soil, were the most apparent. It seemed that these must have been
formed by condensation from metallic vapors in the absence of oxygen
and arrived on earth as raw metal, then bound to sand and soil grains by
the cementing action of oxides. But if they indeed had been formed in the
absence of oxygen, the process must have taken place in the heart of a
large cloud of metallic vapors or other gases from the core of which
oxygen was excluded. What, then, had happened to the large enveloping
portion of the cloud? There must be other particles present in the soil.
The metal-center pellets made up but a small part of the magnetics
gathered. They were easily separated out, being one to two millimeters
in size, but even without them our samples consistently showed the pres-
ence of nickel. Isolating another kind of nickel-bearing particle was a real
puzzle. Attempts to separate and test groups of similar-appearing particles
failed, and finally it seemed the only answer was to test individual particles
for nickel.
At least a hundred particles must have been tested, individually, before
finally, when one more particle was dissolved and subjected to the dime-
thylglyoxime test, a beautiful strawberry red appeared in the test tube.
DISCOVERY 179
series of sieves and some cardboard boxes such as I could pick up at a dry
goods store.
My simple set of procedures was tedious, but it worked, and that is
something that none of the highly technical laboratory and university
scientists were able to claim for their schemes. O n e noted scientist laughed
heartily as he watched me slide my pans and boxes back and forth over
a magnet, making capital of the fact that the particles were both magnetic
and rounded and thus could be sorted out by their responses to the forces
of magnetism and gravity and the principle of the inclined plane, but when
my visitor tried his own method the result was failure.
Spurred on by discovery of the little metallic spheroids, I searched and
searched everywhere on all sides of the crater, on the rim and on the plain
beyond, examining everything more critically than ever before, and one
day made an even more exciting find.
I had stopped to examine a gravel pit dug into the crater rim by the state
highway commission. I found a few crushed bits of yellow-green-brown
slag; some showed a gray outer crust. I looked for more, and soon picked
up a small tear-shaped piece. It appeared the same color as the light gray
dust and gravel among which it lay, but the rockhound's licking test
revealed a dark greenish-gray color under the dust. A canteenful of water
dashed onto the gravel made it easier to identify a number of such small
" b o m b s " of various shapes and sizes. All of these, when broken, were seen
to be of a spongy structure, but composed of brittle, glassy material. When
I ground the bits of slag on a sheet of carborundum cloth from my supplies
in the trunk of my car, and then held them under a pocket lens, they
showed small imbedded metallic particles, bright as chrome steel.
As I drove hurriedly back to the museum on Highway 66 to make a
nickel test, I puzzled over various questions. Could these be mere volcanic
cinders? Could lava fragments carry such imbedded metallic particles? If
these indeed were bomblets created by the impact of the meteorite, why
had they never before been discovered?
Then I remembered that on the far side of the crater rim, the side
nearest to the closest volcanic mountain of the area, lay scattered numbers
of volcanic "clinkers" that were similar to, though larger than, the bits of
volcanic ash familiar on all sides of the crater. Every scientific and other
visitor to the crater had walked over these heedlessly. Some scientists had
picked them up, casually examined them and tossed them away, pronounc-
ing them volcanic lapilli. It seemed not illogical that the cinders nearest
the source would be larger than those on areas farther from the volcanic
mountain.
I, like everyone else, had trod over these "lava bombs" with complete
disinterest, but now I was ready to look at them with somewhat more
respect. The nickel tests I ran that evening on my little bomblets were
positive; the next morning I drove to the crater to study the clinkers on
the southeastern rim.
DISCOVERY 181
Mingled with the rubble of the crater rim were tiny droplets of melted
country rock, some as round as bird shot, others pear-shaped, oval, cylin-
drical with rounded ends, and still others of almost any imaginable shape
and ranging from microscopic to the size of walnuts! One could kneel in
a single spot and pick up 200 pieces without even moving. Some looked
just like those from the gravel pit, but others seemed to be mere volcanic
cinders. All, when ground on my carborundum cloth, showed metallic
grains. Here again was the question of possibility of metallic grains within
the volcanic ash.
I began walking toward the volcanic mountain seven miles away, stop-
ping frequently to search, keeping a keen lookout all the time. The bomb-
lets thinned rapidly beyond the first 1,500 feet from the crater, and hardly
any were found farther than a mile from the rim crest. I walked more than
halfway to the mountains, and as I went the fine-grained volcanic ash
became more and more abundant and slightly coarser, but nothing was
found to match my glassy-metallic slag of the gravel pit and crater rim.
At the Henbury meteorite craters in Australia, and at Wabar in Arabia,
explosion products had been found, little glass bombs, shot full of tiny,
nickel-iron spherules, to which had been given the name impactite in
reference to their origin: glass bomblets formed by a melting of rock by
the meteorite explosion, and scattered through a mist of nickel-iron.
The riddle had been asked often about the Arizona crater: Why were
there no glass bombs like those at the Australian and Arabian craters? It
always was assumed in these discussions that the Barringer group would
have found impactite had it been present. The mathematical theorists
always had an answer based on proper mathematical formulae, and those
of us who were not mathematicians listened. I don't recall ever hearing
anyone suggest that it might be well to make a search. The situation
reminds me of the classical illustration of medieval logic—the argument
over the number of teeth of a horse, a dispute that waxed so hot as to end
almost in violence and that was left unsettled because no one thought to
look in a horse's mouth.
Scientists had speculated and estimated in their attempts to explain the
crater, but never had done much looking. Now we had an answer: There
were such glass bombs all the time. Arizona had its impactite, but we all
had been walking over it so carelessly we did not see.
Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from this story of Dr. Moulton,
the Arizona crater and its owners, and me: that team work between
theorists and scientific fact-gatherers is a necessary part of good research.
Moulton should have insisted on a more thorough job of fact-gathering
before accepting the assignment to furnish the Barringer organization an
estimate of mass within the crater. And he should have visited the crater.
On the part of the Barringer group, the failings were the very inade-
quate fact-finding survey of the crater and its environs, and the later and
less-excusable failure to view with open mind the work done by others,
182 FIND A FALLING STAR
which left for the public a confused picture of what happened some
20,000 to 50,000 years ago on the southwestern American desert in what
now is Arizona.
Looking back on our luncheon of 1936 from the perspective of many
years, I wondered if my failure to grasp Moulton's point of view may have
been the reason that his proposed efforts on my behalf came to nought,
if perhaps he decided quietly, then and there, that I was not capable of
usefully employing an endowment for research. If this were true, he gave
no indication of it and, in fact, continued visible efforts for several years
beyond the occasion.
My work more and more convinced me that Moulton's explosion theory
was correct and that the great meteorite that dug the Arizona crater had
vaporized on impact. My report to the American Philosophical Society in
1949 pointed in this direction, and in October, 1950, I made public
announcement to the press of this belief.
Many scientists have wondered if large meteorite impacts may be ac-
companied by atomic fission. Calculations by British scientists led to the
conclusion that such impacts should produce temperatures comparable to
those developed in the explosion of atomic bombs. It is well known that
the surface of the soil was left glazed by the heat of the first atomic blast
in New Mexico in 1945. In December of 1953 I was permitted to visit
the atomic testing ground at Yucca Flats, Nevada. Not only was the
surface of the terrain under those blasts glazed, but several thousand tons
of surface rock had been melted and reduced to vesicular blobs of slag and
glass, scattered by the fury of the blast to great distances. All of the various
shapes and sizes of impactite bombs found at the Arizona meteorite crater
were duplicated at Yucca Flats to the most minute detail of structure and
form, except that those of Yucca Flats contained no nickel-iron particles.
No longer is the Arizona crater the largest known meteorite crater: A
recently recognized Canadian crater gapes seven miles wide, and there are
others also that are larger, but none boasts the fortunate combination of
size, accessibility and freshness of the Arizona pit.
It is recognized now that there undoubtedly are many major and unex-
plained topographical and geological features whose origin was the impact
of giant meteorites, comets or asteroids, and that other such features have
been obliterated by ages of geologic change and erosion past recognition.
The great "canyons" of the ocean floors may well be of impact origin;
fossil lava flows may be the result of ooze from the plastic interior of our
earth which spread from wounds gouged out by invading bodies from
space.
When we moved near the crater in 1946, our friends voiced skepticism.
Hadn't all angles of this fifty-year-old discovery been investigated? Cer-
tainly nothing remained to be discovered where a million dollars had been
poured into exploration.
DISCOVERY 183
I believed that all of the most important facts had been observed and
recorded, though I suspected there might be some need to reclassify and
restudy certain accepted theories. I was amazed to discover that there were
basic inadequacies in the manner of attack on the crater problem, or
problems.
First, each of the writings on composition and structure of the meteor-
ites had been based upon the study of one or a very few specimens. It
seems obvious that no safe generalization could be made relative to the
nature of 100,000 individual specimens simply by study of a few.
Second, no thought seemed to have been given to the possibility that
specimens taken in different locations relative to the crater might show
different and significant characteristics.
Third, nearly all of the monies expended—in today's dollars probably
an amount equivalent to a million and a half to two million—had been
devoted to exploring the crater pit on the assumption that the principal
bulk of the colliding mass resided in its depths, despite the conclusion by
many scientists that such a huge mass would of necessity explode on
impact. If the colliding mass had exploded, the logical place to look for
the evidence would be not the bottom of the pit, where it was necessary
to work under several hundred feet of rubble, quicksand and water, but
rather on the terrain surrounding the crater.
There was no indication that any careful study had been made of the
soil of the surrounding plain nor of the outer rim slope. Our subsequent
investigations demonstrated that an expenditure of a few thousand dollars
on that terrain would have supplied facts more in harmony with the best
scientific theory than did the extensive and expensive efforts inside the pit.
The prime purpose to which our collecting efforts were directed, and
which would have been served by the comprehensive mapping originally
intended, was to prove or disprove a pattern for the distribution of frag-
ments about the crater.
It is unfortunate that it never was possible to complete some of the
projects started. However, the specimens collected, their characteristics
and the information I had as to their sources made possible some studies
and conclusions.
Despite the interruption of the mapping activity, I knew the quarter
section from which any one of half of all the fragments we collected had
come. I knew still more specifically the locations of 5,000 specimens, and
the depth of the layer of soil from which any of them had been dug. From
the cowboys and other collectors of earlier days I had learned the approxi-
mate locations where hundreds more of the larger specimens had been
collected.
Our 1939 survey had suggested strongly the radial distribution of small
fragments around the crater. I made it a point to ask the cowboys and other
meteorite hunters if there seemed to be any pattern of distribution. Their
184 FIND A FALLING STAR
answers revealed that these men regarded as guides to good hunting areas
lines drawn from the center of the crater through any locations where finds
had been made. This evidence of radial distribution was offset by distor-
tions of the pattern, notably a concentration of small irons on the
northeastern rim of the crater.
Altogether, I spent more than 25,000 daylight hours within sight of the
great crater in Arizona, and put in more than 2,000 hours of work in and
around it.
I had scouted the crater's interior and exterior and had studied it from
the air. An excellent set of aerial photographs was made available by the
photography school of Lowry Air Force Base at Denver. A study of
prevailing wind patterns and examination of the crater out-throw as shown
on these photographs supported an explanation that the heavy concentra-
tion of fragments on the northeastern rim was due to wind.
Approximately 500 of the meteorites collected by us had been cut into
sections, either by me personally or under my personal supervision. I had
etched and studied some 1,500 sections under magnification.
In 1936 I had discovered among several etched specimens from around
the crater one that evidenced by its structure and composition an origin
different from the rest. This I named Canyon Diablo N o . 2. Then, as we
sectioned and studied more and more of the crater irons we soon learned
that not all of these specimens had come from the same meteorite, for their
"signatures" did not conform to a single pattern. As more and more were
cut we discovered not only additional representatives of N o . 2, but at least
four more types—evidence that either a swarm or a small system of dis-
crete bodies had traveled together, rather than just one large mass.
When the question was raised as to whether the crater was formed by
one mass or a great swarm of meteorites, all of the attempts to answer were
based on mathematical investigations as to the mechanical possibilities and
probabilities. No one seemed to think of hunting for material evidence
to support either hypothesis.
All of the small meteorites taken on the crater rim showed evidence of
having been altered by heat, while fragments of similar size taken from
the plains beyond the crater rim showed no such evidence.
My examinations of etched specimens under microscope revealed thou-
sands of inclusions, including forty groups of the famous carbonados, or
black diamonds, found not infrequently in Canyon Diablo specimens and
occasionally in other meteorites. I made an attentive study of the car-
bonados and of the incidence and relative abundance of inclusions of
cohenite and schreibersite, troilite and kamacite.
Fitting together various findings, I developed a theory as to the forma-
tion of the crater. The evidence of a composite fall, the distortions of a
radial pattern of distribution, the evidence of heat alteration in small
fragments found on the rim and not elsewhere; the distribution and nature
DISCO VER Y 185
of the so-called shale balls, found mostly on the crater rim itself, and the
finding of explosion products—metallic spheroids and impactite—seemed
to me to indicate the impact of a planet-satellite group of meteorites, which
on first striking the earth produced a shattering of the outer zone of the
mass wherever it contained brittle inclusions, while the body of the mete-
orite bored inward into the earth to a final greater explosion of the
violence of a hydrogen bomb. Remnants not vaporized shot downward
and deep into the fractured rock or upward as red-hot and white-hot slugs
—the rim specimens that showed heat alteration.
The most significant conclusion was this: The Arizona crater is a great
part of our national heritage and should have been so treated from the
first; since it was not, certainly now it should be acquired and given to the
public as part of the national parks system.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 has met with the approval of practically
every citizen in a near unanimity of opinion not often given congressional
legislation. Only the Antiquities Act prevented the complete destruction
of the now world-famous Petrified Forest when, in 1906, plans were being
perfected by commercial organizations for the crushing of the beautiful
agatized logs for use in the making of sand paper, grinding wheels and
other abrasives. Such scientific marvels as the great Natural Bridges, Zion
Canyon, Muir Woods, Rainbow Bridge, Craters of the Moon, and early
vestiges of civilization like Montezuma Castle and Mesa Verde would have
suffered mutilation or destruction but for the protective hand of the Na-
tional Park Service.
It has become a part of the American way of life to set aside those
outstanding bits of creation so endowed by nature as to contribute impor-
tantly to man's understanding of his environment. Thus our national
government protects the heritage of all her citizens of present and unborn
generations. But because man gains knowledge of his environment mostly
by short steps, each new advance paving way for the next, certain features
unrelated to their immediate surroundings and without counterpart in
man's previous experience have gone unrecognized for generations.
Such was the situation with the Arizona crater. Regarded by scientists
for a half century as of questionable import, this feature of the Arizona
landscape now looms preeminent as a potential storehouse of vital infor-
mation. The world's finest example of meteorite craters, regarded by some
as easily the most significant scientific marvel of the American continent,
passed into private ownership by virtue of mistaken identity and com-
pounded error.
The crater was interpreted in 1891 as of volcanic origin, rather than
formed by meteorite impact, by G. K. Gilbert of the United States Geo-
logical Survey. Dr. Gilbert was a very learned man of his day. He had
considered the idea of impact, but he took the more conservative stand
and pronounced the pit a volcanic blowout, which it resembled in many
186 FIND A FALLING STAR
ways. After A. E. Foote, Gilbert probably was the first man to suspect the
existence of meteorite craters, but no one could know very well what the
appearance of such craters might be. In any event, his mistaken determina-
tion of volcanic origin set the stage for the next blunder.
When a mining engineer learned twelve years later of the crater and of
the persisting story that it had been formed by a meteorite, he conducted
some explorations and then promptly filed a mining claim on the land. The
United States Department of the Interior committed the second error
when it accepted the Barringer estimate that the crater contained minable
ore and granted title as mining claims. Although law required proof of the
existence of ore in minable quantities before application for title, the
crater ownership through half a century has failed to yield a single ton of
such ore.
But now the presence of a large body of meteorite has been shown to
be an impossibility. Instead of being buried in the pit, the meteorite
material is disseminated in the soil around the crater and in the fill within.
This conclusion is reinforced by all other investigations of meteorite crat-
ers in other parts of the world: Meteorites large enough to produce craters
above a few hundred feet in diameter simply do not reside in the craters
they produce but are reduced to gases and dust, blowing themselves to
bits out of the craters they have dug.
The now-accepted explosion theory that debunks the claims for mining
wealth within the crater is in itself an overriding reason for preservation
of the crater as a national treasure. The study of explosion products and
the effects of the explosion on surrounding rocks looms as an extremely
important area of investigation. We do not know, for instance, the extent
of alterations produced in the materials of the earth's crust by the brief
application of tremendous pressures beyond compare in other phases of
the earth's behavior.
Within the last few years two completely new minerals have been
produced by application of high pressure to common minerals of the
earth's crust, and a subsequent search proved that both of these minerals
are present in the Arizona crater. It seems regrettable to allow this tremen-
dously challenging laboratory to lie unused any longer. Extensive explora-
tions should be made in the surrounding rocks to ascertain just what
changes, and how far-reaching, were created by the impact.
Accessible as it is and of such large size, this crater should be studied
thoroughly in every aspect, and serve as a standard by which to evaluate
other discovered craters less well preserved and either larger or smaller
than the Arizona "type" specimen.
The expensive explorations carried out by mining interests since pas-
sage of the Arizona crater into private hands in 1903 had the avowed
purpose of exploitation and resulted in some degree of mutilation of some
of the most meaningful parts of this magnificent product of cosmic colli-
DISCO VER Y 187
sion. To serve its greatest usefulness it should have been kept under
strictest supervision by a skilled staff of scientists, every square foot of the
great pit and its surrounding uplifted rim, as well as the out-thrown rubble
and the surrounding plains, being made accessible to all interested citizens
without danger to preservation.
When the 1947 meteorite shower in Siberia resulted in formation of
some third-rate craters (in point of size), Russian scientists attacked the
problem with a corps of specialists including astronomers, geologists,
meteoriticists, metallurgists, geographers, photographers, artists and sur-
veyors. Buildings were constructed over some of the Russian craters to
preserve them in undisturbed condition for future generations.
The United States has fallen far behind the Soviet Union in this sort of
study. Russia has had a National Committee on Meteorites for nearly forty
years. This committee has attacked the problem of meteorite craters in a
manner of thoroughness which far surpasses anything done in the United
States.
The craters produced by the fall of 1947 in the Sikhote-Alin mountains
of southeastern Siberia were not large and therefore did not yield all the
different types of information which could be gleaned by study of larger
craters, but they did produce some rather striking results and without
question have lent impetus to the ballistics program of the U.S.S.R.
Canadian government surveys indicate that old meteorite scars of large
size on the earth may be innumerable. Canadian scientists have found at
least twenty almost certainly proven craters larger than the one in Arizona.
One of these, about seven miles in diameter, is a conspicuous feature, and
others up to thirty miles in diameter have been proven by core drilling
to be of impact origin.
Our own great nation had the first introduction to this very important
question of impact scars and still has the finest example, yet is far back in
the procession of study of this aspect of the earth's relation to the solar
system. As a National Monument—a recognized part of our heritage,
receiving deserved scientific attentions and attracting the awed respect of
traveling Americans—the crater would bring honor to the owning family
and constitute the greatest possible tribute to the late Daniel Moreau
Barringer, who in the face of frustrating opposition continued to work in
support of an unwelcomed and controversial interpretation of the crater
as of cosmic origin.
fe hath no leisure who uses it not.
—George Herbert, Jacula Prudent urn
12. HOME
There were tense moments, hours, and days as we looked from our hill
and saw the traffic speeding on the new highway with seldom a vehicle
approaching by our narrow dirt road. But when we had recovered from
the shock we turned to the tasks at hand. One of our chief objectives in
coming to this place had been to give us an opportunity to carry on crater
investigations. We now set about re-ordering priorities. We sold some oil
leases which I had picked up during my war job with the solar Oil Com-
pany. We upped our offerings of sales material (meteorites) and I devoted
much time to crater investigations. During those forced three years I made
some of my most important discoveries.
During the last two months of our forced stay on the hill we scouted
and found a location in, Sedona, Arizona, just south of Flagstaff, about
thirty miles to the southwest; and new friends lent us money for the
construction of a suitable building. While they supervised its construction
we took care of the summer tourist trade up on Highway 66.
In September, 1953, we transported our tons of meteorites down the
steep, twisting Oak Creek road to our new building. It lacked the pic-
turesqueness of the old "observatory," but was fresh and clean and bright,
and the downstairs apartment seemed to us the ultimate in civilized com-
fort after our seven years of mud walls and one-room housekeeping. We
had nurtured the few green growing things—cactus and Chinese elm—
on our wind-torn hillside; now we had space for grass, for flowers and
vegetables, with plenty of precious water to support them. We had ordi-
nary, dependable alternating current electricity; Addie was reintroduced
to the ease of housekeeping equipment with plugged-in power. After
seven years, we were again part of a community, with neighbors, shops
and convenience.
O u r business started out well enough to encourage us that the Sedona
move would prove to have been wise, but we were not so busy, nor were
the burdens so heavy, as on Highway 66 even after the move of the road.
Magnetic rake designed by Dr. Nininger
Dr. Nininger collecting magnetics on Crater rim. From these he separates the spheroids
which are believed to be condensation products from the exploded meteorite.
HOME 189
It seemed more of a thrill than when my own first book was published
to receive in 1954 a copy of Minerals for Atomic Energy, written by our son
Bob, then deputy assistant director for exploration of the division of raw
materials of the Atomic Energy Commission.
In 1955 Margaret and her husband, Glenn Huss, came to Arizona to
assist us. As well as sharing the load of conducting visitors through the
museum, they helped us with a new book, Arizona's Meteorite Crater, and
a revision of A Comet Strikes the Earth.
When he was a boy Glenn Huss lived in Horace, near Tribune, western
Kansas when I was lecturing in that part of Kansas and at times I had Alex
Richards lecturing in schools in that area also. On April 17, 1937, Glenn
wrote me concerning what he thought was a meteorite that he and another
boy had found.
At the time Glenn Huss was no more important to us than a hundred
other boys who got our message; but about 1950 he went to work for the
University of Denver Press and there he met Margaret who was also
working there. Glenn had a master's degree in English and the two were
married two years later. Glenn was much interested in meteorites ever
since hearing the school lecture 15 years earlier.
In 1954 when we needed help in the Museum in Sedona we offered him
a job and he took to the work as a duck takes to water. He's an avid reader,
has a marvelous memory and he had a natural liking for chemistry and all
kinds of science.
In Arizona's Meteorite Crater I retraced the feature's past history, outlined
my conclusions as to its formation, and reiterated my hope that the crater
one day would belong to the nation. I suggested twenty-eight specific
researches to be undertaken to evaluate the great event of ages past in
relation to scientific undertakings of the future.
In 1953 Dr. Loring Coes, Jr., while subjecting quartz to intense heat and
exceedingly high pressures, discovered that he had produced a new min-
eral harder and more dense than quartz by 13.5 per cent. This was named
coesite. I was putting the finishing touches on my manuscript for Arizona's
Meteorite Crater when I read the announcement of Dr. Coes' discovery. I
read also comments by eminent geologists to the effect that coesite could
never be found in nature; that it could not be produced short of sixty to
100 miles below the surface of the earth because only at such depths could
sufficient pressures exist.
These men were overlooking a point. Many physicists had calculated
that a meteorite striking the earth at even a minimum speed of five miles
per second would exert a pressure far greater than that produced in Coes'
laboratory. Consequently, I appended a suggestion which appears as a
footnote on p. 50 of the Crater book and recommended again on p. 154
that a search for this mineral should be made in and under the rim of that
crater. It was with a feeling of great satisfaction that I read in Science, July
190 FIND A FALLING STAR
2
On October 10, 1957, when Sputnik was about one week old and still
dominated our nation's news pages, a huge, brilliant fireball flashed across
the morning sky of three western states. A highly trained pilot, a lieuten-
ant commander of the navy, reported that he had dodged the fireball and
then watched it disintegrate beneath him when he was flying at 17,000
feet.
My survey of this meteor showed that the point of disintegration was
at a height of several miles over the central Colorado mountains, more
than 150 miles from the plane. In a Sputnik-oriented world this pilot's
error was a serious blunder. For if the observations of highly trained pilots
and military men were no more accurate, it would be as easy to confuse
a meteoritic fireball with an intercontinental ballistics missle. But the navy
pilot had made his report: "I was flying at 17,000 feet near My ton, Utah,
when I saw this flaming object coming from my left in what I deemed to
be a collision course. Quickly, I banked and turned. As I did so the great
fireball disintegrated under me in a shower of sparks. I resumed my course
and when I looked back saw that several small fires had been started."
HOME 191
Far to the north in Wyoming, men on night duty in an oil field reported
that a blazing object as large as one of their huge field tanks passed over,
narrowly missing some of the storage tanks. At Grand Junction, Colorado,
far to the southwest, observers trembled as they saw this dazzling light
glide to a landing on the slope of Grand Mesa in western Colorado. From
Alamosa, 200 miles south of Denver and slightly west, it was seen to
disappear behind the railroad watering tank. At the same moment men in
the control tower at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, looking west, saw
the object disappear over the eastern part of that city.
A Denver resident, one of the few abroad that morning at 4:07 when
the meteor swept in from the northeast and disintegrated over the central
part of Colorado, described his reactions to me.
"I was standing right here. Had just come out to get in my truck; you
see, I haul trash for people and I get out early. I had just opened the door
of the truck to get in and there she come! I'm telling you it was the scariest
thing I ever seen, twice as big as the sun and ten times as bright! Sputterin',
throwin' off sparks and big hunks of white-hot stuff. I was scared to death.
Tried to call my wife. She was right there in the kitchen, but I couldn't
talk. I stood here trembling and pointing. It was all over in a few seconds.
Passed right over that telephone post and only about ten feet above it.
"Listen, they say it was a meter or something like that. I know better.
I seen it. I know. That was Sputnik. And I knew that he could turn a death
ray on me and just evaporate me. I want to tell you, I never been so scared
in my whole life."
The office of the North American Air Defense Command at Colorado
Springs reviewed all of these conflicting reports. Charged as it was with
the nation's protection against intercontinental ballistics missiles as well as
all other forms of sneak attack, this office could not allow itself to be misled
by the conflicting, fear-inspired reports of a lot of frightened laymen. The
military concentrated on the report of the navy pilot. A commission was
dispatched to Vernal, Utah, the region where the officer had made his
observation.
The commission began its investigation by flying over the area where
the object was supposed to have disintegrated under the navy plane. No
evidence of any fires was found. N o r was any debris seen that could be
considered the remains of the fiery object that had frightened citizens of
three states.
The commission then inquired of citizens in the little city of Vernal.
Yes, one testified to seeing the object disappear about seven or eight miles
southeast of the town. Out went the officers, but they seemed to approach
no nearer to their goal, for residents here pointed still farther to the
southeast.
"Right on the north slope of that mesa. I saw it strike and there was a
great shower of sparks when it hit."
The officers went to the mesa slope, but found nothing. They queried
192 FIND A FALLING STAR
residents of the vicinity. Again they were told that the object had struck
farther to the southeast. Was this a hoax, hallucination? Whatever these
people had experienced must be an entirely different phenomenon from
what the navy officer had reported.
Back in Vernal, more witnesses were questioned.
" G o see Bill Higgins. Bill is a down-to-earth level-headed rancher who
is honest as the day is long."
Yes, Bill Higgins told the investigating officers, he had seen the strange
fireball. It landed within a quarter mile of his house; but it was not
southeast of town by any manner of means. It was southwest about fifteen
miles.
"It struck right behind a little hill just back of my corrals. Looked like
it would blow up the whole earth; but I never heard a sound."
Close further questioning convinced the commission they now had been
pointed to the right spot.
But there must have been more than one object, Bill added, for a friend
of his out north of town said he saw one hit not far from his house at about
the same time.
The more the commission investigated, the greater grew the confusion.
After searching a few locations they returned to headquarters and filed
their report as an unsolved mystery.
Had these men gone with Bill Higgins to his ranch and asked him to
point out for them the spot where he had seen the object strike, he would
have pointed toward the southeast; and his friend north of town would
have pointed in the same direction. The men in Alamosa would have
pointed north and a little west. Those in Grand Junction saw the fireball
a little north of east. Witnesses in Estes Park saw it pass on the west of
them, going south, while the men in the oil field in Wyoming saw it in
the direction of their oil tanks south of them, seemingly so near that they
feared it would hit them and start a disastrous fire. Actually, the meteor
was forty miles high, but to them it appeared no higher than it had to the
trash hauler in Denver.
The great fireball was of such magnitude that if it had passed within a
half mile of a man he probably would not have lived to report it. But it
never came lower than about twelve to fifteen miles above the earth. Most
of the witnesses, including the navy pilot, had seen the object more than
150 miles from them. Only in the vicinity of Eagle, Colorado, had people
seen it from less than forty miles. At about twelve to fifteen miles altitude,
some ten to fifteen miles south of that village, the mass disintegrated.
Those who were awake within a twenty-mile radius of Eagle heard a
tremendous blast, followed by a thunderous roar and rumble, and a few
in that sparsely settled region, who had been awakened by the glare and
blast, reported they actually heard stones thudding down among the dense
covering of scrub.
HOME 193
3
One of the century's great scientists, truly the father of space flight, was
Robert Hutchings Goddard. I have a very clear mental picture of Dr.
Goddard on the occasion of a visit to his laboratory near Roswell, New
Mexico, late in 1930, when he had just started his liquid propellant rocket
research. The professor showed a very modest attitude toward his work,
as there leaned in a corner a somewhat battered length of what appeared
to be aluminum tubing, nearly double the height of a man, resembling
somewhat an over-sized stove pipe. Professor Goddard explained this
cigar-shaped rocket had just been recovered from a flight that reached a
height of seven miles—the first verified successful flight of his new experi-
ments in propulsion, guidance and recovery of rockets. Goddard's pat-
ented gyro was the heart of the rudimentary rocket, guided by two sets
of vanes and with a parachute contained in the nose cone to ease return.
His stove pipe was the forerunner of all the great space-probing giants of
today.
Asked just what was his objective in these tests which the press had been
playing up as his "futile" efforts to reach the moon, he said very modestly
that his hope was to explore the upper atmosphere. I was sure in my own
mind that Goddard's ultimate aim was to help make space exploration
possible. That modest scientist who blazed the trail for space exploration
throughout the world was financed so niggardly that one wonders how he
accomplished anything at all.
Goddard began his experiments with solid proplellant rockets during
the last of World War I, when with funds from the Smithsonian he devel-
oped his first single-charge rocket in 1918 at the Aberdeen proving
grounds. With the end of the war the project was shelved, but it fathered
the bazooka of the Second World War. Dr. Goddard then had joined
Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and alternated service there
for some years with his experiments in New Mexico, which were sus-
pended on a couple of occasions for lack of funds. In 1939, by which time
194 FIND A FALLING STAR
Altogether the lined surface of the stone gives one the impression
that it has been formed by the cooling down from a condition in
which the surface of the entire front was in a liquid state to a tempera-
ture below the melting point of the stone which allowed the molten
matter to congeal while in the process of being swept away . . . the
almost flat base . . . appears to have been developed in a situation
where almost no atmospheric disturbance existed. . . . Here, in the
wake of the moving mass was apparently an almost perfect vacuum.
. . . We may think of this rear side of the meteorite as a furnace, for
over its edges came the violently heated blast of air which closed in
to fill the constantly forming vacuum which was always advancing
rapidly enough to elude the inrushing air. . . . a very effective furnace
. . . which differed from the front exposure of the meteorite mainly
in being in a state of calm, or rather, being in a vacuum.
The oriented Estherville and Pasamonte stones did not conform to the
idea that a falling meteorite must be cone-shaped then prevalent among
aeronautical and ballistics engineers and among writers on meteorites. In
1934 I heard a presentation by an aeronautical engineer which suggested
as applied to automobiles, a pointed tail and blunt front. The only consis-
tent feature I found among oriented meteorites was a dome-shaped or
HOME 197
lected from these falls and consideration of the forms which charac-
terize surviving fragments, should throw new light on the problem
of air resistance to high velocities. Here is an opportunity for
aeronautical engineering to gain new light on problems connected
with stratospheric transportation. Problems which face stratospheric
flying are difficult to solve chiefly for the reason that they lie beyond
the reach of experimentation. Meteorites are constantly meeting with
those conditions as they land on the planet. By a careful study of them
together with the light phenomena which mark their arrival a better
understanding may be had of the difficulties which flying craft will
sometime have to meet.
9) The science of ballistics will need more and more to study the
forms and markings of meteorites as the velocities attempted by
ballistics engineers approach those of the invaders from space.*
These meteorites have been irregular in form at the time they were
set free from the parent mass. Yet strangely enough, each of those
which maintains an oriented flight acquires on its forward end or side
a form which is closely similar in at least ninety per cent of the cases.
This form closely approximates a hemisphere and is not cone-shaped
as much of the literature on meteorites would lead one to believe. My
statements are based upon my personal scrutiny of nearly eight thou-
sand specimens of fresh meteorites which had been collected before
terrestrial weathering had modified them.
I further stated my belief that when a body moves through a gas at such
a sufficiently high speed that its surface is constantly melting, then it
behaves like a body moving through a liquid and acquires the form of least
resistance for a solid passing through liquids, and I recommended that a
projectile might be provided with an alloy jacket of low melting point.
In response to a request from the Ballistic Research Laboratories at
Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1948,1 listed my papers on surface features
and offered to make available for study at the museum, my examples of
oriented meteorites, adding that I was glad the writer shared my conclu-
sion that ballistics engineers would find it profitable to study oriented
meteorites.
The cover of Science News Letter, July 26, 1952, depicted a needle-nosed
model missile streaking through the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory wind
tunnel at Moffett Field, California. The accompanying article stated that
such was to be the shape of new, faster-than-sound superplanes, yet to be
built. Man, the article added, probably never would fly at such speeds,
except for momentary tests, because of speeds, heats and altitudes the
human body could not stand. Heating was listed as the newest formidable
barrier.
Under date of August, 1952, I sent to the Ames Laboratory a letter
suggesting comparison of the pictured needle nose with the "blunt nose
of my little Estherville meteorite which was shaped by aerial friction," of
which I enclosed a photograph. I recommended that a foil of the same
shape be subjected in the wind tunnel to the same velocity mentioned in
the Science News Letter story. The reply I received, written by an "informa-
tion specialist," was that wind tunnel experiments would not be feasible
and that he had discussed the matter with several staff scientists, who
believed "that the rounded shape of the meteorite's nose is due as much
to thermodynamic action as to aerodynamic forces."
I wrote again, to the effect that "the thermodynamic factor was directly
200 FIND A FALLING STAR
and wholly dependent upon the aerodynamic force" and that "I still feel
that these little pellets record some facts that will prove vital to progress
in your line of research."
I did not pretend to be able to decipher the message that I was so sure
meteorites carried for the space effort and the drive to develop long-range
missiles. What I sought to convey was that there was a message, and I
suggested again and again and again that it was in the national interest to
find out what that message was.
On June 1, 1957, the cover of Science News Letter carried a drawing of
a new "nose for missiles"—the blunt nose. The shape conformed almost
exactly to that of my little Estherville meteorite. The accompanying article
announced that the blunt shape "helps to beat the problem of excessive
heat that is generated when the hypersonic missile re-enters the atmos-
phere" and revealed that the Distinguished Service Medal of the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been awarded to H.Julian Allen
for the discovery.
Allen had reached his conclusion mathematically; it was also stated that
the blunt nose had been adopted for offering more resistance rather than
less. In a personal encounter some years later, Allen cordially convinced
me he had reached his conclusion independently.
The evidence I had seen written on the blunt faces of meteorites, ridged
and flowed over with molten flow lines, led also to my submitting a
suggestion that a low-melt jacket be placed on all high-speed missiles.
There was a period in the development of space craft when it seemed
an apparent impasse had been reached because engineers saw little, if any,
hope that a craft could be designed that would not burn up during its
return passage through the atmosphere or at least develop a lethal temper-
ature for any human occupant. Over a considerable period our museum
was visited by numerous representatives of the space program who were
looking for information regarding some metal that could be relied upon
to resist the heat of friction. These men reasoned that if the meteorite had
survived its passage through the atmosphere it therefore possessed a pecu-
liar type or degree of resistance to heat.
Two engineers from one of the principal government research centers
in the East launched into a discussion of the re-entry problem, explaining
why they thought that I, having spent many years studying meteorites,
might know what substance or substances in meteorites were responsible
for their great heat resistant qualities. As I told them that they had been
entertaining a completely false conception, that meteorites possess no such
quality, I could not be sure whether their faces were merely registering
let-down or contempt for my ignorance. I explained that meteorites sur-
vive to reach the soil simply because there is sufficient material on entering
from space that some is left over when deceleration is accomplished. Then
I told them that the Bruno specimen beside which they were standing did
HOME 201
4
During one of the off-times at Sedona when I was busy with research
problems and not on duty in the exhibit room, I was interrupted to greet
a visitor from Jordan. It was Dr. Dashani, director of antiquities of that
country, who was visiting the United States under auspices of the state
department. He seemed greatly intrigued by the meteorites and began
asking questions as to why we were operating the museum, how and
where we had acquired the collection. I told him that we were just about
ready to bring the museum operation to a close.
"Why? Why do you have to do that? You say you are not able to make
it pay. Why doesn't your government give money for it? It gives money
to our country to finance various cultural activities. Surely your govern-
ment would finance your museum?"
It was rather difficult to discuss this matter with a stranger from another
country which received aid funds from our own, but actually he was
speaking thoughts I held in my own mind from time to time.
I went through again in my mind all the reasons I had so often laid out
as to why the museum should not be sold:
Activities associated with its operation and the field program which
preceded it had been responsible for recovering at least half of all the
meteorites discovered in America since 1923.
202 FIND A FALLING STAR
income from the museum, where Margaret and Glenn remained on duty.
Once more we were faced with the old questions: Whether and how to
keep the museum; whether and how to dispose of the collection. To
depend substantially on field work and lectures was too strenuous for me
at past sixty.
When we had found ourselves stranded for three more years at our old
location away from the new highway, I had written to a number of leading
scientists of known interest in meteorites, disclosing that our situation
would require us either to divide the collection or sell it entire.
They had answered, " N o , don't sell the collection unless you can sell
it whole." The response uniformly signified that the welfare of science
best would be served by keeping the collection intact, if possible, and by
placing it, if possible, with a university where it could serve research as
well as display.
But we had not been able to sell the collection whole, or even bit by
bit, so we ventured to borrow heavily again and built our new exhibition
building in Sedona on the assumption this beautiful little town would
become a mecca for nature-minded tourists. The move was good; the town
boomed; but the boom was in terms of retired couples and art-oriented
people, mostly. It was apparent that we were at a stalemate. We had
assumed that as the town grew, and awareness of our museum's location
grew, business would increase, but it stayed about the same.
My friend Gerard P. Kuiper of the University of Arizona, formerly of
Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, brought an Italian as-
tronomer to visit our museum and, although we had closed for dinner and
I was alone, I opened up and we had quite a lengthy session. Neither of
the two visitors felt they could accept my theory of the lunar origin of
tektites. The next day Kuiper came again, and I read to him two pages of
facts about the moon and meteorites that I had jotted down as an aftermath
of our discussion. These seemed to weaken his disbelief.
He asked me what support we were receiving from the government or
from universities. I told him, " N o n e . "
"I think it is entirely proper that you receive the help that will enable
you to finish off some of your important research projects and to write
them up. You have more information than any other man in this field and
it would be a shame for you to pass on without leaving this in a usable form
for future generations."
He encouraged me to approach the National Science Foundation for a
grant for research with part-time salary. Other scientist friends recom-
mended that I seek support from the Office of Naval Research and Army
Ordnance; both these departments indicated interest but nothing ever
developed. Another proposal was that I apply for funds to make a round-
the-world flight in search of craters.
I was tired of applying for grants, but decided to make these new efforts.
204 FIND A FALLING STAR
They all came to nought, but the suggestions were indicative of an awak-
ening interest in things meteoritic.
With a generosity of understanding, coupled with a regret that Harvard
found itself unable to acquire the collection, Fred Whipple had written,
in 1951:
In late 1957 and early 1958 it seemed that we finally had arrived at the
point when we would have to put our survival first.
In 1956 Max Hey, curator of meteorites of the British Museum of
Natural History, had attended a meeting of the International Geological
Congress in Mexico, and had stopped at Sedona to examine the collection.
He suggested that the British Museum might desire to acquire a large part
of it. The following year that institution asked us to submit an extensive
price list of specimens that would amount to a "vertical split" of our
collection.
In January, 1952, we had invoiced the specimens listed in our Catalog,
exclusive of some duplicate and storage material, at $258,000. In applying
the British Museum's request for a vertical split, and taking into account
expenses of cutting and preparation and the fact that division of material
did not destroy by half the value of the resulting parts, we selected 276
out of our 680 falls, of which we offered divisions of one-fourth to one-
half, or smaller, at a total price of $155,000.
The British Museum was interested in obtaining material both for dis-
play and for various researches. Those responsible for meteorites at the
British institution informed us that our list of offerings with prices was
acceptable, but asked for time to look into the problem of raising money
for the purchase. We agreed to await their final decision, which would be
determined by their success in searching for necessary funds.
Before final acceptance by the British Museum, there suddenly was a
surge of interest on the part of both the Arizona State University at
Tempe, and the Smithsonian Institution. The two American institutions
also were dependent upon finding funds. Arizona State particularly had
no resources at its disposal and would have to locate outside assistance.
The Smithsonian indicated an interest in buying the collection outright
and, with no time to make any revised inventory, we simply guessed that
$200,000 would be about right for a discounted price for the collection
as a whole, but we made it clear that a prior offer was pending for a portion
of the collection.
All three parties were informed of the various offers, without any of
them being named, and were told that we would deal with the first to come
HOME 205
Mr. Nininger has passed 70 and is in failing health, thus his active
pursuit of meteorites is over.**
and
Many explanations have been advanced for the origin of tektites, includ-
ing theories that they are of human manufacture, are glass meteorites,
nodules from "light metal" meteorites, products of lunar volcanoes, or
remnants from the deeper crustal layer of earth set free by the hypothe-
sized separation of the moon from our planet.
In 1938 Dr. Virgil Barnes proposed that tektites were the product of
lightning striking in certain types of soil on the earth and this theory
enjoyed a considerable following for several years. Dr. L. J. Spencer of
London theorized that tektites were a form of impactite produced by
crater-forming meteorites on the earth. A number of eminent physicists
now think that very ancient and very large meteorite impacts on the earth
produced tektite glass which was thrown into temporary orbit and re-
turned as tektites.
Tektites have been known to occur on only a few areas of the earth's
surface, all of these locations, with one exception, lying within an
equatorial belt eighty degrees in total width. Though they have differ-
ences one from another, tektites are strongly similar, and those found in
a particular region have common characteristics which differ somewhat
from those found in other localities. It seemed to me that tektites fit into
the picture of intense and violent bombardment of the moon by meteor-
ites, with resultant scattering of the lunite rock to great distances and at
great velocities. In February and March, 1943, Sky and Telescope carried
a two-part article, " T h e Moon as a Source of Tektites," in which I outlined
my theory that tektites are fragments of lunite (the shattered lunar rock
comprising the surface of the moon) which have been set free from the
gravitational force of the moon and then have fallen into the stronger
gravitational pull of the earth. In 1947 I set forth this theory in expanded
form in a paperback booklet, Chips from the Moon, published by our mu-
seum.
These odd disks and buttons and dumbbells were high on our list of
things to explore, and our Far Eastern itinerary included three of the most
heavily strewn tektite areas.
It was an exciting privilege to meet, in Manila, Dr. H. Otley Beyer of
the University of the Philippines. Trained as a geologist, Dr. Beyer was
sidetracked into archeology via ethnology and then, while pursuing a
career as a professional archeologist, stumbled into tektites, first as a hobby
and then so deeply that when we met him in his seventy-sixth year (1958)
he had in his possession 500,000 tektites. He contributed some of the best
papers to have appeared on tektites and all the while retained his reputa-
tion as the top man in Philippine archeology.
Dr. Beyer above all else is a field man. I had become somewhat impa-
tient with the rapid growth of tektite literature, mainly produced by men
who had studied a dozen or so tektites in the laboratory. It was very
refreshing to meet a man who had collected a half million tektites from
SLOWING DOWN 211
thirty or more locations on a single island and several hundreds more from
locations scattered through a half dozen other countries, and who was not
yet ready to offer a theory as to their origin.
The reason for this seeming tardiness in theorizing became obvious as
one conversed with him and observed his work in field and laboratory:
He knew too many facts. Always, just as he had about finished aligning
his facts he found it necessary to examine another bag of specimens some
individuals of which stubbornly warped the alignment. He chose not to
label these the "exceptions that proved the rule" but rather went on
patiently observing and comparing both tektites and their environments
in the hope of finally discovering an alignment which the stubborn facts
would fit.
Dr. Beyer was laboring under handicaps, living alone in a shabby upper-
floor room to which his collection was moved prior to occupation of
Manila by the Japanese. The lack of facilities and equipment would defeat
most men, but he never uttered complaints. His work room and library
had no electric lights and his windows were constructed of thin blocks of
dingy oyster shell. On even the brightest days his room was so poorly
lighted I could not have thought of working in it, yet he could point out
structure and form in amazing detail. If we overstayed the five o'clock
closing time even a few minutes on the December evenings we spent with
him, we had to find our way out through a maze of halls by feel or by
flashlight.
Next, we went to Saigon because we knew that tektites had been found
in South Viet Nam when it was a part of Indochina. They had been labeled
"Indo-Chinites" by Professor Lacroix, the French tektite authority who
first described them. Our only hopeful contact in that little country was
Professor Edmond Saurin of the University of Saigon. Could he tell us
where we might search?
"In the city of Dalat, about 150 miles northeast of here, between the
Old Church and the Hospital Civil. We found a considerable number right
in the road."
His classroom duties made it impossible for him to go with us to
Dalat. Since it seemed hardly likely to us that we would find collecting
to be as simple as the good professor seemed to expect, we sought out
a conveyance and a driver who could not only transport us to Dalat, but
serve also as guide and interpreter. We hired an English-speaking em-
ploye of our Saigon hotel who, with notebook and great eagerness, be-
gan to outline a lengthy plan for visits to all the shrines and places of
interest of Dalat, and who was quite crestfallen when I explained we
were seeking a peculiar kind of rock and had no time for sightseeing.
He brightened as he began to list museums and mines where we could
find rocks, but again I interrupted to show him a sample tektite. Quite
212 FIND A FALLING STAR
The great island continent "down under" was the big goal of our trip.
We had scheduled a two-months stay in Australia, for a long trek into the
outback to visit meteorite craters and to search for the Australian tektites,
Australites.
With Allan Kelly, a geologist friend from Carlsbad, California, we
SLOWING DOWN 213
than half of his ranch and that most of it was still "bush." In view of the
fact that they had simply collected those tektites which they came across
accidentally, and those were recovered at a rate of slightly more than two
per square mile, they must represent a rather small fraction of the total
number present in the soil. We purchased the marvelous Jones collection
entire, but still we made no finds in the field.
Countless times we stopped in likely looking areas of barren soil, blown
fields, sand dunes, openings in the bush, where we walked about scanning
the ground. We were camping out every night, and as we made camp and
gathered firewood we scrutinized the ground carefully. We never walked
anywhere without looking at the ground, but never a tektite did we see.
From Kalgoorlie our way lay across the great Nullarbor Plain, which
most Australians know only as an area to be flown over, or crossed by
train. We were told that we were foolish to try it by car. The road was
rough and sandy, the terrain barren and treeless.
We loaded our van with supplies, including gas and water sufficient to
carry us the entire 1500 miles to Adelaide on the eastern edge of the
Nullarbor, and started off*. The trek across the Nullarbor, a region resem-
bling the Navajo reservation country of Northern Arizona, took five days.
All the time we continued our individual searching of the ground when-
ever we stopped; still we arrived at the end of our journey without having
found a single tektite in the field.
Later I discovered in talking with scientists in Melbourne and Adelaide
that very few Australian geologists have ever found a tektite. An exception
is Dr. George Baker of the University of Melbourne, whose curiosity
twenty-five years ago led him to explore an almost inaccessible, rapidly
eroding slope resting precariously on a vertical cliff that plunges into the
sea. Here, where other men had seen no reason to venture, the normal
deposit of tektites has remained, a few being set free by erosion each year.
Dr. Baker makes regular excursions to this "private" hunting ground,
gleaning a few choice specimens each trip. In twenty-five years he has thus
gathered more than 800 Australites.
Dr. Charles Fenner, who spent many years studying Australites, and
who by gift and purchase amassed a great collection in the Museum of
South Australia, estimated that from one to ten million tektites had fallen
in Australia. This seems a large number until one reflects that the portion
of Australia within which specimens have been found comprises some
2,000,000 square miles. An average of two or three little tektites on each
square mile is spreading them out pretty thin. It is no great wonder that
our brief expedition made no finds.
At Adelaide, 1500 miles from our starting point, we disposed of our car
and camping equipment, and flew to Alice Springs, the kickoff point for
side trips to the meteorite craters. The Alice Springs country was hot,
insect-ridden and suffering from prolonged drouth. One station had lost
SLOWING DOWN 215
5,000 cattle. There was absolutely no forage left except leaves on the
trees; it was hard to visualize this country green and lush as we were told
it would be in the "wet."
The Australian Bureau of Mining furnished cars and drivers for a one-
day excursion from Alice Springs to the thirteen Henbury craters. I found
spheroids, a number of small meteorite fragments and some impactite. We
purchased additional meteorites from the widow of the man who had
supplied us with Henbury specimens many years before.
At the small Boxhole crater, a pit some 500 to 600 feet in diameter, 150
miles from Alice Springs, we found no meteorites.
To reach the Wolf Creek crater, Australia's largest, two-thirds the diam-
eter of Arizona's, it was necessary to fly to Hall's Creek and from there
drive a hundred miles by jeep. Because the trip would be so rough Addie
was strongly advised not to go and finally consented to remain behind.
The jeep trip required seven hours. The last nine miles and four.hours
were through a kind of spiny grass called spinifix, whose tight sod hum-
mocks grew six inches high and two to twenty inches apart. The jeep
bucked along like a galloping mule with a broken leg. Wolf Creek, as
expected, yielded many fragments of oxidized meteorite.
Dalgaranga is the sixteenth of the Australian craters. We had visited this
medium-sized crater on the third day out in our Combi, which we chose
to call the "Kangaroo," and had found some small meteorites. I was
surprised at the scarcity of material, since this beautifully shaped, well-
preserved crater was little-known and little-visited. I determined to return
at a later date with a detecting device and a man and equipment to
excavate. After our return to Sedona we were surprised, on polishing one
of the little Dalgaranga specimens, to find it was not a medium octahe-
drite, as described, but a mesosiderite. Other specimens were like it; some
others were true siderites; none fitted the published description.
The Museum of Western Australia endorsed our plan to extend the
surface search and excavate to some extent within the Dalgaranga crater,
and my son-in-law Glenn Huss and I returned the following October. We
collected 207 specimens, all quite small, a third averaging about one-ninth
ounce and the largest weighing two ounces. All of the larger ones were
completely oxidized. When later we cut and polished more than half of
the specimens, they showed a variety of composition—most were sider-
ites; some were mesosiderites and others a combination of siderite and
mesosiderite; two were aerolitic (stony). Many showed deformation by
pressure and some showed heat alteration. The material from within the
crater itself was badly disintegrated and oxidized and bore no resemblance
to the meteorites found on the surrounding plain. We theorized that the
crater was made by a mass of ten to twenty tons, predominantly stony,
which was thoroughly shattered and which for the most part has decom-
posed.
216 FIND A FALLING STAR
2
When Addie and I left Australia we had been away from the United
States five months. Only visits to New Zealand and Hawaii and the long
sea voyage lay between us and Los Angeles harbor, where we docked May
14, 1959.
We had arranged for purchase of a hilltop site while we were away and
had approved plans for building a home. Until it should be finished, we
went back to trailer life; Margaret and Glenn Huss with their family were
living in and operating the museum.
We found the museum just barely carrying itself. We would have to
make a final decision as to ours and the museum's future.
Once more I ruminated with myself for long hours over the alternatives
of closing and remaining open. The sale of the first portion of the collec-
tion had given us a breather, but it was plain our problem was not solved.
I wrote memoranda to myself: "Why the Meteorite Museum Should
Not be Closed," "The Future of the Meteorite Museum," "The Program
of the American Meteorite Museum."
Even with the removal of the great number of specimens acquired by
the British Museum, the worth of our exhibit as an educational instrument
had not suffered appreciably.
No visitor ever went through our little museum without opportunity to
ask questions. Because our whole effort was devoted solely to meteorites
it was possible to concentrate and absorb in a fashion that is impossible in
the ordinary museum, where hundreds of different subjects are presented.
We brought to the general public opportunity to see and handle meteor-
ites in their natural condition, just as they are found in the field; we
furnished verbal instruction with special emphasis on those facts that
would enable agricultural and other outdoors people to recognize meteor-
ites. We carried on continuing field work, thus not only adding to the
material available to view, but enlarging the fund of knowledge concern-
ing distribution of meteorites. We exhibited the widest possible variety of
meteorites both in their natural form, displaying such surface features as
fusion crust, pitting, orientation and flight markings, and in cut, polished
and etched slices, showing interior structure and components.
What would be the source of materials in the future? The majority of
all the meteorite finds of the past generation had directly or indirectly
resulted from the educational program carried on by our laboratory, first,
and our museum, later.
I did some multiplying. By my figures, the museum had served a half
million visitors during more than 4,600 days of operation since October
19, 1946, and the verbal instruction given to groups of two to fifty would
equal nearly 7,000 one-hour lectures.
Our last hope had been that the museum could pay its way and support
SLOWING DOWN 217
Margaret and Glenn, who would operate it, leaving us free of its burdens
and attendance and care. But it was apparent it could not. We inventoried
our remaining collection, this time using the data of our sale to the British
Museum as a guide to value. O u r resulting invoice was a lesson on the
importance of taking time for inventory, for it showed, on that basis, a
value of more than $530,000.
By Thanksgiving Day, 1959, we were moved into our new house atop
one of Sedona's red hills, our first real home since leaving our rented
house in Denver.
I helped the workmen select lichen-covered stones for both the interior
and exterior rock work of our bright, contemporary home. Addie shopped
for furnishings. The delight of our house was our hungry fireplace for
which we sawed and hauled firewood from the hills.
In the fall of 1959 Arizona State University at Tempe again indicated
a desire to acquire the collection. New and sudden interest in space,
missiles, rockets and satellites had made meteorites the obvious and most
probable source of information vital to progress in all of these fields.
Addie wrote to one of the children that "scientists are hounding us to death
for material we don't want to part with." As the requests for material and
information kept multiplying, we felt it would be almost tragic if we
should drop out after all of our struggle, just as the long years of effort
seemed to be fruiting. On the other hand, the time was late for us; we
concluded that we really had no choice.
We indicated that we would be willing to dispose of the collection to
Tempe at about half its catalog value, but that we might move to offer the
collection out of the state if definite interest was not shown soon.
Glenn and I returned from the second Dalgaranga trip in October. At
the end of November I made a quick flight east for lectures at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
In accepting an invitation from the Departments of Metallurgy and
Geology at M.I.T. to speak before "interested persons," I wrote that my
chief interest always had been and still was "to see a genuine, broadly
conceived and well financed program of meteoritics." I added: "At this
stage of the game I recognize that meteoritics has outgrown me in many
of its aspects, for which I am greatly delighted. However, I am constantly
being reminded that there are at least a few aspects of the subject wherein
my years of critical observation can be of considerable use to the techno-
logical and the specialized researcher." My topic was "A National Pro-
gram of Meteoritics."
At Harvard I addressed a group of scientists representing eastern uni-
versities and governmental agencies who were concerned with building
an active program of meteoritics. H e r e , my subject was "A Plan for a
Nation-Wide Coordinating Center for Meteoritical Research."
Most of the proposals I made at Harvard on December 2, 1959, were
218 FIND A FALLING STAR
not markedly different from plans suggested in the past or from actual
methods of field work of our own program, only updated.
In Popular Astronomy, November, 1933 I had outlined a suggested
program of research on meteorites. In 1935 I published a plan for a
"Proposed National Institute of Meteoritical Research."* Then, twice
more, in connection with the effort of Denver businessmen to establish an
American Foundation for Meteorite Research and the plan presented to
the Penrose Foundation, I drew up detailed suggestions for a coordinating
research program. My book Out of the Sky carried similar recommenda-
tions in 1952.
With the coming of the space age, it seemed there were more listeners
and perhaps a greater willingness to undertake such a program. One
suggestion in particular, almost identical to a suggestion of 1935, attracted
interest—a plan for thirty batteries of four automatic, wide-angle cameras,
to be set up at distances of 300 miles over the entire nation and, if feasible,
a cooperating sister network in Canada. The cameras of each battery
would face in four directions in order that any fireball of important magni-
tude could be promptly and accurately triangulated.
I suggested also a parallel plan for a lookout network of fireball observ-
ers, to consist of correspondents in principal universities and colleges, the
U.S. Forest Service, airport control towers, the U.S. weather bureau, the
air force and other similarly situated individuals who would report fireball
sightings to a central control center.
I presented the same "Plan" before the "Space Science Board" of the
National Academy of Sciences at the California Institute of Technology
December 14 and 15, 1959. Following the Caltech presentation, Dr.
Harold C. Urey requested and received mimeographed copies; others
were sent to Fred Whipple, who requested further information on meth-
ods of implementing the program. Written appreciations for the filling of
both these requests rest in my file.
Published accounts the next year, I960, of the initiation of a nationwide
search for meteorites with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at
Harvard as the organizational center, credited the "launching" of the
program to a meeting of the Meteoritical Society the previous September.
No mention was made to me during the brisk question-answer period that
followed my December talk at Harvard of any previous such discussion
at the Meteoritical Society meeting.
The "Prairie Network" for observation and recovery of fireballs covers
the plains area of the nation with camera batteries set at intervals of 150
miles. It is the sort of thing that I longed for back in the thirties when I
was exhausting all of my resources in trying to plot the course of meteors
from the testimony of witnesses who had only accidentally seen the
*The Pan-American Geologist, Vol. LXIV, September, 1935, pp. 1 0 7 - 1 2 4 .
SLOWING DOWN 219
"There seem to be a great many people these days who are work-
ing on certain phases of meteoritics," Frederick wrote. "I cannot help
wondering, however, how seriously interested they are in meteoritics
as a whole or in meteorites per se. . . .
"I wish that it were possible for me to sit down with you and have
a long conversation on a number of matters meteoritical. . . . In spite
of all the activity that seems to be going on at present, I must confess
that I have mixed feelings in regard to some of it, and that at times
I am downright disturbed about the future of meteoritics in this
country. I wonder whether you have similar reactions or whether you
are more optimistic. Unfortunately, the old-time meteoritics (of 25
or 30 years ago) seems to be disappearing; who for instance, is going
to carry on the field work that you have done—and who is interested
in meteorites for their own sake and not simply in the answers to
certain restricted problems that may be obtained from studying
them?"
bility for sale of the remainder of the collection. He expressed a hope that
the collection might remain in the United States, preferably the west, and
added,
»
Prague, too, had meteoritical information, and the university there pro-
vided us with a guide who drove us 150 miles to visit the tektite fields.
Near Tubingen, Germany, we were escorted by a university faculty mem-
ber to inspect the nearly circular valley of Nordlingen Ries (Ries Kessel),
about twenty-seven miles across, since proven to be a meteorite crater by
the finding in its walls of coesite.
While we were tracing information about an important meteorite which
fell in Zweibriichen, Germany, some ninety years ago, we stumbled into
what seems to be the ancient abode of the Niningers. The name is promi-
nent in the village of Bad Durkheim and appears several times in the
Manheim telephone directory. It seemed consistent that a meteorite hunt
should end at a dwelling place of Niningers.
From Strasbourg we made a prized excursion to the little Alsatian
village of Ensisheim, where a large meteorite had fallen about the time
Columbus landed at San Salvador. The meteorite had been pronounced
a "miracle" by the clergy and other wise men of the place and time and
is preserved to this day. The stone no longer is kept in the church, but in
the rathaus (town hall), in a little upstairs "museum" that holds a few old
records, an implement or two and a few relics. We were led to the
meteorite by a plump little lady about four feet six inches tall, who scurried
about through several rooms of the small city hall until finally she emerged
with a huge key. Waving this at us, she led us down the stairs and across
the street and upstairs again in an older and more ornate building, where
we followed her up worn granite steps to a room which opened to her
huge key. Here was her museum, with the meteorite displayed in the
center of the room, lying atop a rickety old pedestal, covered by a glass
top. Nearly all the fusion crust is gone from the stone, and all of its
prominences have been knocked off, leaving it about half its original size
and distorting the meteorite to a mound-like shape.
In Heidelberg we were guided by Dr. P. Ramdohr who, after show-
ing us the small but important collection of true meteorites, opened a
small cabinet drawer labeled pseudometeorits. Looking over this collection
I noted that European scientists seemed to have been plagued by about
the same array of mistaken identities as are those of us Americans who
encourage the untrained public to send in objects suspected to be of
extra-terrestrial origin. There were nodules of iron sulphide, magnetite,
iron concretions, basalt and other minerals and rocks commonly mis-
taken for meteorites.
One small specimen caught my eye at first glance, but I waited until all
the others had been examined before taking it up for inspection. (This is
a habit of mine which I cannot explain. When I am in the field searching
for a certain kind of specimen and spot one, usually I look all about it for
any others similar before picking up the important find.) As I picked up
that most important of the specimens contained in the collection of
222 FIND A FALLING STAR
pseudometeorits, I said to the good Doctor Ramdohr: " D o you think this is
a pseudometeorit?"
He looked at it, noted its number, then read the label in its small tray
which bore on an attached pink tab the same number (96) as on the
specimen, and answered " Y e s , " reading aloud the label: "Pseudometeorit
108.47 q. Fund: 1909 in der Nahe de Lahnufers bei Marburg. "
"Dr. Ramdohr," I replied, "I think this is a genuine meteorite of the
pallasite variety."
Seeing that he showed no interest in questioning further the accuracy
of the classification which had been assigned, I asked if he would allow
me to take the specimen, cut it and return one portion of it to him with
my own classification. It was agreed that as a pseudometeorit it really had no
value and that in case my judgment proved correct it would constitute an
important addition to the thirty-five falls and finds that had been recorded
in Germany during the past century and a half.
I gave Dr. Ramdohr a receipt for the little specimen and upon return
to Arizona had it bisected. It was revealed to be one of the most beautiful
little pallasites on record.
3
March of 1961 found us back in Sedona, still settling into our new
home, laying a hearthstone that boasted a fine series of tiny fossil tracks,
and finding places for the small furnishings we had brought from all over
the world to add a cosmopolitan flavor to the Indian and Mexican rugs and
baskets and western paintings we had always favored. We spent a good
deal of time unpacking, sorting and grading and repacking for storage
quantities of tektites that our Vietnamese friend continued to send for our
purchase.
We planted shrubs, geraniums, mounds of chrysanthemums, gillia, cen-
tury plants, yucca, cactus, pyracantha for the wintering birds. Our entry
and patio and the garden descending a steep hill behind the house began
to flow with color against the red ground rock. At the side of the house
wild white primroses congregated in a gleaming mass. Watering chores
were never-ending; few things, other than the natural flora, could grow
in that soil and climate without the attentions of hose and spray. Even
inside the house my precious lichened rocks of fireplace and planter had
to be kept moist. Care of living things is of itself rewarding, and I would
rise early and have my chores well started and a walk completed by a
respectable breakfast hour.
The frequent retirement problem of what to do with one's time both-
ered neither of us. We merely extended our old interests and found new
ones. Addie discovered a new hobby. She had saved stamps over many
years from our foreign correspondence; now she bought reference books
American Meteorite Museum, opposite Meteor Crater on Highway 66 in Arizona.
Visitors studying exhibits at the Museum.
SLOWING DOWN 223
and stamp books, dragged out all her old envelopes and packages of
stamps and all those she had collected on our Far East and European trips,
and earnestly set to work to build a creditable collection. I dragged out
my old bundles and piles of manuscripts, some written as long ago as
college, saved against the day when I might wish to set down an autobiog-
raphy. I easily grew restless under the harness of writing chores, finding
it difficult to work for more than two or three hours at a time. I had given
up trying to learn the use of a typewriter years before, because my mind
always raced ahead of my fingers so persistently that I was kept in a state
of constant nervousness.
I doubt that the world holds another woman who would put up with
such demands as my program placed upon Addie. When she accompanied
me on field trips it was not merely for the outing. She helped with the
driving, with field notes; and, whenever we were using a trailer, kept
house and meals in readiness just as at home, while I dashed abodt after
all sources of information, scurried off on strenuous field work or deliv-
ered a lecture or several lectures in a day. She expanded her activities as
the children grew. Through the years from time to time we had living with
us, besides our own three children, several nieces, several nephews, and
also children of friends, who shared our home for weeks or months at a
time.
Now there was an almost constant stream of visitors—relatives, former
students, old friends, scientists—to our home on the hill. When there were
not visitors, we often were away. In the summer of 1961 we drove to
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to make a magnetic rake survey of the field
adjacent to the Bruderheim shower of March 4, I960, for the University
of Alberta.
This fall had occurred not far from Edmonton, and very near the village
of Bruderheim, a Ukrainian settlement. At the time of the fall there was
a six-inch snow cover over frozen ground. All sizable stones had bounced,
splashing black soil in all directions that made their finding an easy matter.
About 700 pounds was recovered, the largest fragment being seventy
pounds. The farmers had noticed black dust or gray snow the morning
after the fall, covering some of the ice of the broad Saskatchewan River
and the fields just east of it. Searchers had gathered the meteorites, includ-
ing several hundreds of small pea-sized stones.
Our purpose was to try to collect the meteorite dust, though it was now
sixteen months after the fall. We spent many hours pulling our specially
constructed little rake over the fields, but our efforts yielded only one tiny
meteorite. Bruderheim is a stony meteorite; most of the dust simply was
not magnetic.
Great areas, apparently hundreds of acres of snow had been gray with
small particles, which sank to the bottom on the first sunny day after the
fall. Had anyone considered this dust important at the time, it could have
224 FIND A FALLING STAR
been easily and meaningfully collected. These small particles were the
most important feature of the fall in my opinion.
There seemed now to be demands for my time and services from
individuals and groups heretofore uninterested in the Nininger name and
work. A request came for a list of projects to be submitted to NASA under
the auspices of the Rocky Mountain Association of Universities. I was
being pressed for a field manual on discovering and collecting meteorites.
These requests, together with my autobiography, a proposed book of
meteorites of the world, the cataloging of about a thousand tektites a
month and a few other things seemed to be almost enough for a retired
meteoriticist.
Two scientific meetings held in November, 1961, one in Washington,
D.C., and the other at Pennsylvania State College, appeared to herald
acceptance of theories I had advanced as far back as 1943, but which at
that time had made no noticeable stir.
The Washington meeting was concerned with tektites, and drew a large
crowd of interested persons—mostly of the United States Geological Sur-
vey. Only a few years before, that organization still was failing to recog-
nize officially the existence of meteorite craters; practically the entire
program on this occasion was devoted to the question as to whether
tektites are produced on the moon or on the earth by impact: Not impacts
of the size that produced the Arizona crater; but huge asteroidal impacts
such as produce lunar maria.
At the Penn State meeting two days later I lectured on "Cosmic Blitz,"
presenting the matter of asteroidal impacts as the logical culmination of
a fair factual consideration of observed rates of infall of meteorites of
various size. My talk was so well received as to indicate that finally the idea
had arrived.
Several of the speakers on the Washington program credited me for
their present interest in tektites, and two went so far as to say that I had
fathered the whole study of impact as the origin of tektites.
that certain aspects of this young science have vital bearing on problems
that have plagued geologists and astronomers.
It seemed that the years of battle and the years for scoffing were ended.
Long-eluded recognition and honors began to flow. The City of Denver
honored me among other former citizens on the occasion of its centennial
birthday celebration in 1958; McPherson College bestowed a special
citation at commencement of that same year. I was granted a life member-
ship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In June,
1963, Arizona State University awarded me an honorary doctor of laws
degree.
4
How many hundreds or thousands of specimens, some of them unusual
in type and spectacular in size, must there be in odd nooks and crannies
of our world, of which at least a portion could be retrieved if a more
general interest in a knowledge about meteorites were developed.
One of the largest, finest and most unusual stony meteorites yet discov-
ered came from the Bondoc peninsula of Luzon in the Philippine Islands
only because of coincidental events and the persistence of an ingenious
American. Conditions for finding meteorites in the Philippines are very
poor. Most of the islands consist of rugged, heavily forested volcanic
mountains. The combined 7,000 separate islands constitute only one
570th of the earth's land surface, and very little of this is under cultivation.
The Phillipines had recorded only one meteorite besides the witnessed
fall of 1938 at Pan tar, Lanao. The man who had given most attention to
meteorites in the islands had been Father Miguel Selga, a priest whose
collection had been lost during World War II. Father Selga had since died,
and I was positive that many Filipinos must have encountered meteorites.
We had been in the Philippines ten or twelve days in 1959 when I visited
the office of the National Bureau of Mines, sure that among the thousands
of samples that inevitably reach such an office, there must be an occasional
meteorite. The only question in my mind was: Would a meteorite have
been recognized and saved?
"Well, yes, once in a while such a sample comes in; but who cares about
meteorites?"
I had the answer.
Might not the Bureau have such specimens on hand? Well, the director
thought, there should be one. It had come in not so long ago; he sent a
girl to find it. She failed; another young lady was dispatched. The second
messenger returned shortly and handed over the specimen, a rounded,
rusty lump of what appeared to be nickel-iron, very badly weathered.
Despite its unusual shape—meteorites almost never are round or even
approach that form—it obviously was meteoritic. The lump had some
226 FIND A FALLING STAR
stony matter adhering to one side. This fact, together with its rotundity
and the statement by the Bureau official that the lump had been found to
contain nickel and that it had been detached from a large mass, set my
mind to racing.
The official assured me the Bureau had no interest in the specimen and
that I was free to pursue the matter.
The sample had been brought in by a prospector as evidence that he had
found an iron deposit, and the case had been duly referred to Senator
Tanada of the Philippine Congress, whom I thereupon visited. But this
gentleman had transferred the matter to his son, a lawyer, whom I now
called upon only to learn that he had invited his friend Mendoza, another
young lawyer, to share the new prospect with him, for Mendoza lived very
much nearer to the location of the deposit, described as in a remote jungle
far down the Bondoc Peninsula.
The pair of lawyers had contacted two Japanese geologists who desired
an iron mine, but when these two were escorted to inspect the prospect
they were disappointed and disgusted. This was no iron outcrop, exploded
the Japanese geologists, but only something that had fallen from the
heavens, and they turned away.
Perhaps the state of mind and muscles of these two geologists should
be considered against the background of the ordeal required to reach the
remote jungle location. After several hours aboard a slow train they had
waited for a bus which, when the weather and roads were not too bad,
could cover in a day the forty miles or so to a coastal village. On bad days,
the bus didn't run at all. From the village a small boat carried them to and
into the mouth of a river. After passage by water so far as possible—the
boat passage also was dependent on favorable weather—they had tramped
for ten hours through crocodile and serpent-infested jungle to find not a
vein of ore, as they had expected, but a lone metallic lump which they
judged to be of low-grade quality.
After this failure of hopes for a rich iron ore prospect, the sample had
been given to the Bureau of Mines. Had we not visited Manila no doubt
it would be lying there yet gathering dust, its identity perhaps lost for all
time among the multitude of " n o value" samples with which it shared
storage space.
After I heard young Tanada's hard-luck story I asked if he and his
partner would be willing to relinquish their filing rights. They would be
glad to do so, they told me, and for a small fee would see that I was guided
to the site. Mendoza had relatives who lived in Gumaco, much nearer to
the location of the meteorite, and arrangements were made by telephone
for a family member to guide me to the meteorite. Accordingly, I pur-
chased camp clothes and equipment and we boarded train for Gumaco the
next morning.
We arrived at Gumaco at 1 P . M . As I stepped from the train to help
SLOWING DOWN 227
Addie down, I crumpled with a badly turned ankle. O u r host was most
solicitous, installed us in cheerful quarters and provided a vessel and hot
water for my injured foot.
Toward evening I felt so much better that we set out to shop for a
needed pair of khaki trousers. There were four or five stores in the village;
each handled just about everything from clothing to hardware. The pur-
chase of a pair of trousers seemed an easy chore. But though each store
carried khaki clothing, for the first time in my life I found myself incon-
venienced, at five feet five inches, by being too large. It was only then that
I noticed how small are the people of the Bondoc Peninsula. A pair of
trousers was ordered to measure—and within two hours I was ready.
Now, however, a doctor called to examine me at our host's home
ordered me to do no walking, thus ending the excursion. Sadly disap-
pointed, we returned to Manila by train.
If the profession of meteorite hunting deals out some cruel blows it also
springs marvelous surprises. Ten years earlier a visitor from Manila to our
museum on Highway 66 had shown a keen interest in meteorites. He was
John A. Lednicky, a University of Kansas graduate who had lived in
Manila most of his life. After his return to the Islands he sent us three fine
tektites and we continued to correspond. I had telephoned him while we
were in Manila, and an invitation to dinner at his home awaited us on our
return to that city. During the evening I told him about the sample that
the Bureau of Mines had turned over to me, my plans for investigating
it, and my disappointment. The report given me by Senor Tanada in-
dicated a mass of a ton or more—perhaps several tons. I mentioned that
I might make a return trip.
Mr. Lednicky said that if and when I needed any assistance he would
be glad to help. He had access to all kinds of equipment and he liked such
work.
In the following months, as we traveled in Vietnam, Thailand, Australia
and New Zealand, and during our leisurely ship journey home, I pond-
ered the Bondoc story from time to time: Everything pointed to an unusu-
ally large meteorite; there were indications that it was a new variety; and
its geographical location was especially important, since it was only the
third find in a land area that should have yielded several times that num-
1 ) W sU
ber. '^ ''•
I decided to write to John Lednicky to request the help he had offered.
His reply was prompt: He had given the matter careful thought and would
go to the site as soon as weather would permit, Bondoc being a narrow
peninsula that suffers very severe monsoon rains and windstorms and is
subject to typhoons. Lednicky added that while awaiting good weather he
would look carefully into all of the legal aspects of the project.
I sent letters to Tanada and Mendoza introducing Lednicky as my
representative. On September 15, 1959, Lednicky wrote again—he must
228 FIND A FALLING STAR
wait until after the national election because bandits were operating on the
peninsula; there had been considerable shooting. But after the election
there followed more rains, more typhoons; then an illness kept Lednicky
in the hospital for some time.
February 13, 1961, he reported that he had visited the site after great
difficulty, having had to walk nine hours after following the crocodile-
ridden river as far as navigable by boat. But he wrote that the stone looked
like ordinary iron ore, although he could find no vein connected with it.
On March 24, he wrote sad news. "The so-called Bondoc meteorite is just
a hunk of low-grade hematite and not a meteorite at all." He had shown
samples to his father, an experienced mining man who had prided himself
on knowing meteorites, and to two geologists, who had just "laughed it
off" as "some of that low-grade iron o r e " that had been "coming out of
the Bondoc peninsula for the past fifty years."
Now, I knew that Lednicky either must have reached the wrong rock
or else this was a new type of meteorite. The sample submitted to the
Bureau of Mines could not be mistaken for low-grade iron ore because
it was metallic, bright, tough metal inside its surface rust. If it had come
from the same rock as that which my friend had visited, then here was a
stony meteorite which bore large lumps of metal. I managed to reach
Lednicky by phone and asked him to send his specimens to me at once,
air mail; I was sure they were meteoritic; this evidently was a new type
of meteorite; I wanted it more than ever.
Lednicky had to await legal clearance before he could send the samples,
but on June 25 they arrived. Tests proved them to be just as I had
suspected—typical stony meteorite in which most of the small metallic
grains had oxidized. I urged him to make every effort to recover this great
meteorite—whatever the cost.
A reply from Lednicky dated July 6 expressed surprise that I still consid-
ered the specimen to be a meteorite, because among local geologists the
belief was unanimous that such " o r e " had been coming from the Bondoc
since time immemorial. However, he was taking steps to have the mass
removed and shipped to me.
On November 23, Lednicky wrote that the stone was much larger than
had been estimated. The field crew thought now that it would weigh eight
tons—such a size would necessitate the use of a large bulldozer at a cost
of $100 a day; a crane at $250 a day, with the probable total cost, $10,000.
He advised caution. I telephoned him that the measurements that his men
had reported would mean far less weight than the estimated eight tons,
that my specific gravity tests indicated not over 3,000 pounds; I asked him
again to get it out at whatever cost was necessary.
As I learned later, his men reported on January 9, 1962, that they had
been able to load the meteorite on a wooden sled, but that three carabaos
had been unable to move it. Lednicky advised them to try a small bull-
SLOWING DOWN 229
dozer. When that was not sufficient he himself went down with a larger
'dozer and the meteorite was moved to the mouth of the river.
On February 21 Lednicky wrote me again. He had gone personally to
the site for the third time. By making careful measurements he found the
meteorite to be much smaller than his men had reported. Also, he had dug
around and under the original resting place and recovered many small
pieces. He found, as I had predicted, that these were not of the same
specific gravity as the first metallic sample.
Now a raft was being built on which it was proposed to tow the meteor-
ite to Manila. Recovery costs, Lednicky estimated, would not run over
$3,700.
On May 29 he wrote again; the meteorite at last was in Manila:
The last phase of the recovery was rather risky and gave us some
worried moments. The day we got it on the bamboo raft for the trip
down the river and across the stretch of sea, a typhoon showed up.
The water got so turbulent that we had to hire two motorized fishing
boats to stabilize the raft. Night came and one of the boats started to
founder so we steered close to shore as I was afraid to lose about
$3,000 worth of recovery gear that I had borrowed from the office
—besides the meteor. As we got near the coast of Mulanay one boat
sank and we almost lost four men trying to keep the raft from collaps-
ing as the waves were unusually big. It was a nightmare all the way
—so near and yet so far.
Once it was ashore I found it hard to hire a truck for the run to
Manila. All our office trucks happened to be out of town and none
of the trucking firms in Manila wanted to rent us a truck either
because they were advised that the roads were lousy or due to the
uncertainty of the typhoon. Luckily, I ran into a friend who would let
me use one of his large trucks provided I had it back within twenty-
four hours. It was sent after the meteorite and everything seemed fine
until the truck wasn't showing up when due to return.
It gave me several anxious hours waiting as I worried that they got
held up as they were lugging $2,000.00 with them to pay for the
recovery team in the field. It finally showed up just before the dead-
line with the precious cargo. I was able to sleep soundly after that for
a while.
John Lednicky put three and a half years of effort and frustration into
the "favor" he had offered in late 1958. Without him the Bondoc meteor-
ite never would have been recovered.
Even after the great meteorite finally reached Manila there were more
delays and red tape before it could be carefully crated and shipped to the
United States. It weighed 1,955 pounds—a shade under one ton and the
230 FIND A FALLING STAR
Mr. Mahieux took me to his quarters in Santa Rosalia, filled with inter-
esting relics from various parts of the world. He brought forth from his
mineral cabinet a beautiful little meteorite of the pallasite variety, saying
that it had been brought to him by a native from somewhere near the
village of Ignacio. This little meteorite was an exceptionally fine example
of a rare and beautiful type, and also it represented a large geographical
area never before known to yield a meteorite of any kind.
The following day Mr. Mahieux drove me by truck some twenty miles
south to where a young Mexican maintained a machine shop, explaining
that this young fellow previously had been employed by his mining com-
pany to pilot the trans-gulf plane we had ridden from Guaymas, but they
had been compelled to discharge him because of a very disturbing trick
that he frequently played on passengers. He would take off with a group;
then when he got out near the middle of the 100-mile-wide gulf he would
topple over and pretend he had passed out, remaining "unconscious" until
the passengers were all in near hysterics. He seemed to derive great fun
from this performance; but, said Mahieux, after one passenger had suff-
ered a stroke the firm simply fired him.
It was this man whom Mahieux would ask to fly me to Loreto. I must
have shown that the prospect scared me; Mahieux hastened to inform me
that the young man was "the best pilot" he ever knew.
" H e built the plane you will fly in; made it out of the parts of various
wrecked planes and automobile parts, and it's a better plane than a new
one straight from the factory."
His words were only partially reassuring, but there was no other course,
nor could I back out when my host was going to such lengths to accommo-
date me. So I said nothing and arrangements were completed for the
flight.
A retired navy captain and a young geologist were the other two passen-
gers. We flew down the coast. The weather was fine. Below us Concepcion
Bay was so glass-smooth and clear that I could see schools of fish in the
water beneath us. We made a perfect landing in Loreto.
I called upon the padre at the venerable old church. He could speak
some English and he guided me to one of Mahieux' former employes who
also spoke fair English and by whom I then was escorted to the house of
Sefior Davis, in whose yard lay the meteorite I had come so far to see. It
was a true meteorite, and instead of being only half or a third as large as
I had been told, it was even larger than Mr. Quinn had estimated. Instead
of 150 pounds it weighed 209. A price was agreed upon and arrangements
made for shipping it home.
I returned to the flying field, where my two co-passengers were ready
for the return flight. But where was our pilot? He had been seen in a bar
about an hour ago.
"Oh, my god!" exclaimed the captain.
"That S.O.B.!" cried the geologist.
232 FIND A FALLING STAR
In the spring of 1965 Addie and I traded in our Scout for a camper
mounted on a pickup truck and spent the three summer months touring
Canada and Alaska. On our way north we heard reports of a great evening
meteor seen by many persons in British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon
and the State of Washington the late evening of March 3 1 , 1965.
Scientists of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton,
B.C., the University of Alberta at Edmonton and the University of British
Columbia at Vancouver were impressed with the magnitude of the phe-
nomenon and promptly collaborated in energetic efforts to locate the fall.
On the basis of interviews with witnesses they established by triangulation
the approximate terminal point of the fireball.
The radio stations of British Columbia and adjoining provinces and
states, moments after the fireball, had been besieged by calls from their
listeners saying the fiery object had come to earth in their respective
communities. There were reports of violent repercussions over a great
area.
Calculations by an eminent physicist on the basis of seismic disturbances
of different magnitudes and at different distances from the terminal point
led him to an inescapable conclusion that the mass of the meteorite respon-
sible for the fireball must have been of the order of a million tons. This
conclusion was considered proof positive that the meteorite must have
produced a sizable crater, and a prompt aerial search was inaugurated by
plane to be followed by helicopter.
The investigators at Penticton told me they had no very encouraging
results of their two months of effort, but they had not given up. On the
very day of our visit, June 6, the aerial reconnaisance of the rugged
wilderness area still was being carried on. The cooperating scientists had
gathered what seemed to be a very satisfactory lot of data; they had
determined with apparent accuracy that the fireball had approached from
a westerly direction and had disappeared at a lower than normal altitude
over a remote, uninhabited and rather rugged terrain in southeastern
British Columbia.
Patches of "black snow" were reported in a region in harmony with this
determination. Requests for samples of the "black snow" brought a con-
tainer of black mud to the observatory. This material was regarded skepti-
cally and was forwarded to Ottawa for analysis. The reports returned
indicated the presence of nickel but were far from positive.
I inquired if I might see a sample of the "black snow mud." All but a
very small remnant had been sent to Ottawa, but they were glad to show
me, somewhat apologetically, what remained. The sample was wrapped
in white paper and stuffed into a glass jar. The rather crumpled paper
showed smears of what appeared to be finger smudges from the black
234 FIND A FALLING STAR
mud. In the folds were a few small, black, solid bits of matter, one of which
was placed under a compound microscope for my examination.
When I brought the particle into focus I could scarcely refrain from
shouting with excitement. I was looking at as beautiful an example of
fusion crust as I had ever seen, and it exactly resembled the crust that I
had examined on several type I carbonaceous chondrites, a type of stony
meteorite rich in nickel-iron and distinguished by little rounded bodies
called chondrules. Nearby, as a portion of one of the black finger marks,
I could discern a small chondrule, perhaps .2 millimeter in diameter.
After expressing my conviction that they had a carbonaceous chondrite
to deal with and that any search for a crater would almost certainly be
futile, I was told that none of the group had visited the site where the black
snow was collected, either while the good snow cover of March 31 still
lay on the ground or after it had gone.
Evidently none of the men concerned with this survey was sufficiently
familiar with the various types of meteorites to recognize the spoonful of
" m u d " as the product of disintegrated carbonaceous chondritic material.
On being unexpectedly faced with the overwhelming confusion of re-
ports from excited and terrified witnesses, the men to whose lot it fell to
deal with this very outstanding event had thought first of that feature
which has been the central theme of ninety per cent of meteoritic literature
—the great Arizona crater. Actually, such a disorder of reports suggests
first the smash-up of a stony mass of uncertain magnitude and the shower-
ing of several square miles with large and small fragments and more miles
with sand, gravel and dust.
The great good fortune of this situation should have been the snow
cover on the terrain at the time of fall and the reports received of the black
snow. There should have been no time lost in reaching the area by heli-
copter and snow shoes. From the site of the blackened snow the party
should have radiated in a search for small disturbances in the snow: not
a crater, but for small bits of black rock or masses of the deliquesced
remains of such.
A brief laboratory examination of the mud that had been black snow
should have told the investigators at once that the chances were a hundred
to one that no mass larger than a few pounds should be expected to have
survived, and that most of the material would be in the form of particles
too small to cause any noticeable disturbance of the snow cover. From such
a large mass there would be expected thousands of small, fully encrusted
individual meteorites ranging in size from BB shot to a few ounces, with
perhaps a few weighing several pounds, besides tons of dust spread over
several square miles. The only evidence of such a deposit that could have
been seen by plane was, of course, the black snow where heavy concentra-
tions of dust had fallen. Masses of a few pounds would in most cases have
been crushed as they struck the frozen ground beneath the snow and
SLOWING DOWN 235
discovered even though they were in civilized areas, it is evident that the
number of known falls is a small percentage of the number that actually
have landed on the earth. Work in the field led me to conclude that
perhaps several thousand falls occur upon the planet each year, the
majority of which of course land in the great seas, wide expanses of arctic
snows, jungles, deserts and other areas where man is not present to ob-
serve. In the course of a thousand years there is an enormous amount of
meteoritic matter sprinkled about our earth. Some of these meteorites are
of such nature that they would last for many milleniums before complete
disintegration. Others would survive a few years. A few would become
nearly unrecognizable in a matter of a few days, or in wet weather might
be reduced to mud in a few hours, but the majority of meteorites are of
such character as to survive the action of the elements for at least a
century.* It is not surprising that during this century and a half of man's
recognition of meteorites there have been comparatively few specimens
found that were not seen actually to have come to earth.
I believed that inadequate field work in cases of witnessed falls left
important small constitutents of those falls uncollected, and also that the
meteoritic dust and gravel carried in the cloud trails actually constituted
the principal bulk of such falls. Setting out by field work to gather facts
to replace assumptions, I came up with an estimate of meteoritic increment
of 50,000 tons a day, which would amount to a layer nineteen feet thick
in 60 million years. It is yet too early to say how nearly my estimate was
justified; but every year the "experts" come nearer.
My field work proved, as I had contended would be proved, that
long-accepted theories as to the ratios of occurrence between metallic and
stony, and between chondritic and non-chondritic specimens, were false
because they were made without the existence of any meaningful or
extensive field program on which to base conclusions.
I reasoned that there are unbelievable numbers of meteorites remaining
unfound because people are unable to identify them as meteorites. Iron
meteorites differed most from terrestrial rocks; chondrites differed more
than did achondritic stones. Our work demonstrated definitely that stony
meteorites are some hundreds of times as abundant in the soil as had been
supposed, and that the ratio between them and metal meteorites was not
different among unwitnessed falls than in witnessed falls. In the course of
chasing down as many fireballs as possible, half of all the finds made
proved to be of the achondritic class.
In an area of 450,000 square miles we recovered representatives from
200 previously unknown falls of stony meteorites in thirty-five years; yet
probably not more than ten per cent of the population of the area ever
was contacted by our group either by word of mouth or by printed matter.
*Here I refer to the well known kinds of meteorites.
NEW PATHS AND BYWA YS 239
2
Meteorites are in a class by themselves. All other material belongs to
this earth and so far as we know has been on the planet through all
geologic time, but meteorites are invaders from without. They represent
other parts of the universe about which we as yet have no way of learning
NEW PATHS AND BYWAYS 241
save as we study the light that arrives from luminous sources, and as we
begin to catalog and interpret photographs taken by the satellites that are
the new miracles of our age. The lumps of stone and iron still are our most
tangible source of information concerning the vastnesses of space stretch-
ing immeasurably in all directions.
A small boy asked me, "When do meteors become meteorites?" Rather
than to consider whether the change takes place in burning flight, or at
the instant that destructive friction ceases, or on striking the ground, it
seemed simple and plausible to explain that an object is a meteorite invisible
in space until it flares up during its struggle with the atmosphere, produc-
ing a light that is known as a meteor, and that what remains to reach the
ground is still a meteorite.
Friction has reduced its size, and has changed its surface texture and
contour, but for the most part the materials in the stone are not different
from what they were in space.
Our solar system holds a great expansive multitude of meteorites with
the sun as their central controlling force around which each member
revolves in an orbit. The number of meteorites in this great aggregation
is too great to estimate in the present limited state of man's knowledge,
but astronomers tell us that in the course of a year our own planet in
making its annual journey around the sun is bumped into by more than
eight billion meteorites, each of which is large enough to produce a
"shooting star" or visible meteor, and that a thousand times as many more
plunge into our atmosphere which are too small to produce visible mete-
ors. This would give us a figure of eight million million each year that are
swept up by our own little planet.
Although we have pushed out the horizons of knowledge a long
way since the time when the earth was considered the central feature
of the universe, we really have only very superficial knowledge even
of our own insignificant planet, this speck of the solar system we call
our world.
If a huge map the size of an ordinary city block were made of the known
universe, the earth could not be represented at all. An ordinary punctua-
tion mark, a period such as is used on this page, would be more than fifty
thousand times too large to represent even the outermost limits of our
solar system.
Scientific investigations of our earth have been limited to a very thin
outside layer. Using a large apple to depict our planet, cutting it crosswise
between the blossom and stem end, the skin would represent a layer about
twenty-five miles thick on the outside of the earth. Most of our first-hand
knowledge is limited to a depth of only about a mile, although in a few
places the earth exposes its own interior to a depth of a few miles. O u r
mines dip only a little more than two miles into the earth, and these
penetrations occur only in scattered places. Even the planned Mohole
242 FIND A FALLING STAR
diameter would weigh one thousand times as much, but it would have only
one hundred times as much surface for the atmosphere to press against and
thereby check its speed. For a mass a mile in diameter there would be
almost no reduction of speed.
Every now and then for more than a generation, an introduction to an
audience has described me as "the man who has discovered more meteor-
ites than any other man who has ever lived." The record is one of which
I am rather proud, but in my opinion it is not my chief contribution to the
young science of meteoritics. I would rather believe that the finding of
meteorites only served as a means to the more important end of helping
man to better understand the environment in which he finds himself; I
would like to think that my interest in these immigrants from space
reached a little farther than the number of meteorites resting on museum
shelves.
Specimens like Estherville and Bruno bring messages written on their
stone or iron faces, and chemical and nuclear tests tell us more about their
composition and their origin, yet interpretation of this information is
difficult enough, and the facts bared by each specimen are so compara-
tively few, that we need to recover every meteorite, and every kind of
meteorite that it is possible to recover, so that as each specimen adds to
our fund of knowledge and each helps to make some one point clear, we
are able from the aggregate to understand some of the mysteries of space
beyond our planet and of developments previous to the records of history
and pre-history as we now have them.
Perhaps my greatest contribution to meteoritics has been the creation
of proper interest in the subject, and the suggestion of lines of investiga-
tion which, though at the time considered out of bounds, since have
become worthy topics of discussion and study.
Dr. Gerard Kuiper, in about 1955 or 1956, invited me to contribute
a chapter for Volume Four of the series on the solar system that he was
editing: The Moon, Meteorites and Comets. When the 800-page volume was
published by the University of Chicago Press in 1963 it included a dozen
chapters on meteoritics, and Dr. Kuiper and his co-editor, Barbara M.
Middlehurst, referred in the preface to "the almost explosive growth of
this subject in recent years." Several of these chapters concern aspects in
which I attempted to arouse interest back in the thirties and forties when
publishers regarded them as too far out for print; thus many ideas which
I advocated without much research to back them up came to be respecta-
ble topics for expert treatment.
A few years ago a long distance telephone call came from a researcher
in Harvard University. He inquired about a statement I had made some
three years earlier to the effect that a certain meteorite was a fragment and
not a complete individual iron from space. I explained that my conclusion
was based on what I had learned from studies over the years of the surface
. NEW PATHS AND BYWAYS 245
shine forth in various collections of the world only because a farmer was
a better observer than was the provincial assayer who, as a student, never
had been shown a sample of pallasite meteorite, and so judged the far-
mer's specimen to be merely leakage from a furnace. Because of the
farmer's acuity and refusal to accept this mistaken judgment, the world
acquired a specimen that bears a mineral hitherto unknown either from
the earth or sky, discovered in I 9 6 0 and christened Farringtonite by E. R.
DuFresne and S. K. Roy in the course of modern-day investigations into
the nature of specimens gathered and preserved against the day when the
meanings they hold for us should become clear.
The Canyon Diablo irons first were described in the early nineties by
men who observed, and who decided rightly that the surfaces of all of
these irons were weather surfaces, that any fusion crust they ever bore had
long since flaked off due to oxidation. In my personal examination of many
thousands of the irons I have yet to see the least bit of fusion crust.
Probably they were well covered by such crust when they fell 20,000 to
50,000 years ago, but even weather-resistant nickel-iron suffers from oxi-
dation in that length of time. Yet there are men today who think that on
those irons is still to be found the original fusion crust. These are men who
never have developed powers of observation. They accepted without
qualification the statement that fusion crust is a typical feature of meteor-
ites, and so, rather than recognizing the ability of nature to obliterate
natural features, they identify as fusion crust the brown film of oxidation
that has replaced the original fused surface during Canyon Diablo's centu-
ries of weathering.
It has not been many months since I was showing an eminent astrono-
mer some small meteorites I had brought home from a recent field trip.
He spoke of them as being nickel-iron and, when corrected, responded,
"Well, most meteorites are nickel-iron, aren't they?" They are not.
Scientists from all parts of the United States and from many other
countries walked about the Arizona crater environs over the years, seeing
the big hole, viewing specimens of meteorites, reading past accounts of
the crater's making. They walked, without knowing it over impactite
bomblets by the millions and over more millions of metallic spheroids—
the two most meaningful classes of material found in tremendous quanti-
ties in the vicinity of the great crater—for they did not observe that of
which they had not read. N o r did I for many years.
my friends put it more kindly. "You are one of the last rugged individual-
ists," he told me.
There has been a tendency to try my hand at doing something someone
said couldn't be done, and a tendency to question everything. These
characteristics have affected my life all the way through; sometimes as
afflictions, sometimes to advantage.
Men had studied meteorites many years before my time, but only as a
special diversion from the professions of mineralogy, chemistry or as-
tronomy. The best of them tried to convince me that the subject was not
worthy of a professional attack.
Mine was a strange, unique and to many of my contemporaries, a
mysterious career, without precedent, without salary, without capital.
There were no blazed trails to follow; there were no subsidies and no
institution willing to be associated with such an unorthodox approach to
a relatively unpopular scientific discipline. The same goal was pursued
steadily, sometimes painfully, through four decades. There were times
when the financial fog got pretty thick, nearly obliterating the road ahead.
Probably my "unique" career will have to remain unique. I was in the
fortunate position of living in a time when it was possible for a man to
make his way through some unusual pursuit; and I was privileged with the
opportunity of studying all phases of meteorites, the means of their recov-
ery, what they had meant to our earth, what they are made of, what
tortuous descents through the atmosphere they had survived. In today's
technological world scientists are much more restricted to areas or kinds
of researches, and most will not experience the fun of the whole view, as
I had it.
I insisted to myself that when the importance of my program became
known, finances would be available for its completion. This has come to
pass in time for me to be witness to it, but not in time for me to play a
key part as I had hoped.
Each individual who spends his lifetime in natural science becomes
wrapped up in that phase which claims his attention. There are no dull
days for the man who devotes his eyes and mind to the lives of wild
animals, fishes, reptiles, birds. His life is one continuous series of surprises
as he finds and investigates new forms and uncovers new behaviors and
characteristics.
• Our new world brings more leisure; the natural sciences stand to play
an important part in the occupation of that free time and in making it
useful as well as enjoyable.
The field of fossils carries us back into the realm of infinite time; as-
tronomy carries us out into a speculative pursuit of infinite space; but
meteorites are concrete messengers out of both infinite time and infinite
space.
Fossils occur in myriads of forms, in almost numberless duplications in
248 FIND A FALLING STAR
many instances, for a newly found species may run into hundreds or
thousands recovered in a single year. Names of insects newly discovered
in a year contribute substantially to the catalogs. New birds, new fishes,
new reptiles are added regularly to the lists although there are legions that
are rare, even extremely rare, and nearly one thousand species and subspe-
cies that will soon be extinct.
But every new meteorite brings not only its own substance to be de-
scribed but may be a source of totally new information that will add new
dimensions to our knowledge of earth and space.
What else is there that can give one such a sense of wonder as holding
in one's hand an object that has come from space?
Perhaps some of the wonder is gone for this new generation that stands
on the threshold of the sky, yet it seems to me that I have stood at the foot
of the sky while man has propelled and thrust himself and his machines
into its reaches, and my wonder has only increased. The sky stretches still
unknown beyond where stars have led and beckons still into new fields
with paths in all directions.