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Holbrook Meteor

Hi List,

The Saturday, May 30, 1998 edition of the Tucson Citizen wrote up a article,
to wit:
WOMAN RECALLS METEOR'S PLUNGE	
A 103 year old Tempe resident remembers 1912 Holbrook meteor, Arizona's only
observed fall.
Pauline McCleve of Tempe doesn't need to go to the movies to see scary scenes
of meteors streaking toward frightened people.  She can just rerun one of the
memories in her head.  Now 103, McCleve remembers the explosion in the sky
when a rock from outer space fell near Holbrook in northern Arizona on July
19, 1912.  "That was the loudest sound I ever heard in my life," she recalled
recently.  "There was no sound from us except a gasp of terror."  She was 17,
standing outside her family home in Holbeook with her parents and some of her
10 brothers and sisters.  The meteor dominated the early evening sky. "It was
coming right toward us.  We thought we were going to die.  "The closer it
came, the more frightened we were.  We just stood there paralyzed."  The boom
was heard as far away as 100 miles north and south of the city.  "People ran
into the streets and stared at the sky."  Witnesses in Winslow, 30 miles
farther west, saw a smoky trail streaking eastward toward Holbrook.  McCleve
remembered it as a glowing fireball with a bright tail.  The boom came from a
chunk of asteroid shattering into thousands of pieces.  It probably was about
the size of an office desk when it first entered the atmosphere, said Carleton
Moore, director of the Arizona State Univ. Center of Meteorite Studies.
"Holbrook is still the only observed fall in Arizona."  McCleve remembered,
"It exploded like shrapnel"  The pieces landed in a 3-mile-long ellipse
centered about six miles east of Holbrook.  One baseball-size chunk knocked
the limb off a tree.  ...More than 14,000 pieces were collected that summer,
mostly from the surface of the ground, but some of the largest were embedded
up to 6 inches deep. ..."That was the most terrifying time in all my years,"
said McCleve, "Those few seconds of the meteor coming toward us."

Thought you all would like to read about this first hand account of a meteor
strike and a little of the history that went with it.

Bob