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Norton County Fiasco

Hello Michael and list,

I have spent countless hours in the north-central part of Kansas doing field
work and have personally met dozens and dozens of people who saw the
fireball/bolide :-) come in.  I would not doubt if there were thousands of
people who actually saw it.

It seems anyone over 60 years of age up there has a "Where I was when the
meteor of '48 came in?" story.  One man who was a school boy at the time was
on the side of the road because the school bus had a flat tire and all the
riders were sitting on the grass when it flew over them.  One remembered that
he was in the basement gym at the high school in Wrestling practice when they
heard (and he said they "felt") the explosion as it rumbled the building they
were in.  Others were outside doing chores as it was still not supper time on
the prairie farms all over Western Kansas when the huge fireball exploded
raining down rocks over Norton County.

I can still remember the first time I was in north Norton County and I turned
off the paved road onto a dirt county road when within a few hundred feet I
passed this basketball sized cream white rock on the side of the road where a
road grater had pushed up the dirt.  I slammed on my breaks and threw the car
in reverse and backed up into a white cloud of dust.  Getting out of my car to
go grab my treasure, I quickly realized that ALL the dirt in that part of the
county was Creamy WHITE in color!!!!!!!!!  What a cosmic joke, to drop a rare
white Aubrite (with creamy colored fusion crust) onto the ground that has the
same appearance!!!

As far as Nininger was concerned, he took the defeat at Norton County very
hard.  He had spent thousands of 1948 dollars and hundreds of hours traveling
and hunting down the fall, speaking with virtually every farmer in the area
doing the dirty work, only to have LaPaz come in at the last minute with
around $30,000 of public funds and outbid him for the rock.  

Once upon a time I had the chance to read an "aborted chapter" from one of Dr.
Nininger's books that described in detail the behind the scenes of that event.
It seems that this was one of the great dividing wedges between him and LaPaz
since LaPaz never accepted Nininger since his doctorate was not in the
Meteoritical sciences.  And as mentioned in other posts, it bothered LaPaz
that since Nininger was not on the payroll of any institution, he had to sell
meteorites to feed his family and barely survive for decades as he and his
wife recovered something like 600 new finds out of the field!  He felt that
far more harm was being done to the science by Nininger than good!  

I do find it VERY interesting that as fast as things are changing, they still
stay the same.  

As a matter of fact, I am going to offer and Essay Contest: For the person who
writes the BEST essay arguing as to why it is right OR wrong for people to
profit from selling meteorites will win some Norton County meteorite for free!
I have a small capsule with several fragments of Norton County that I will
gladly give away to the winning author.

As to not bore people on the list with all of these essays and wear out
peoples delete buttons, please send them to me privately.  If any of you out
there wish to read these, I will attempt to have them posted at my website
www.meteoritebroker.com  ASAP.  The essay does not need to be long, as long as
the point gets across effectively.  

This should be interesting!

Steve Arnold

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