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Port Orford Meteorite Hoax - Part 1 of 6
Andy Grubb schrieb:
> Hello List, I'll suspend lurking to ask if anyone has any
> classification and/or historical info on the Port Orford,
> OR meteorite. Thanks in advance.
Hello Andy, David, Martin, and List!
PLOTKIN H. (1993) The Port Orford Meteorite Hoax
(Sky & Tel., September 1993, pp. 35-38):
The story of the discovery and subsequent loss of the Port Orford
meteorite has become one of the most enigmatic and captivating tales in
the history of meteoritics. It describes a giant 10-ton object - a rare
pallasite (stony-iron) meteorite - allegedly found in 1856 by John
Evans, a contract explorer for the U.S. government. Evans reported that
the meteorite lay on Bald Mountain, one of the rugged Rogue River
mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean some 40 miles from the remote
coastal town of Port Orford, Oregon. He did not recognize it as a
meteorite but broke off a small sample to include with his other
geologic specimens to be shipped back East for analysis.
When C.T. Jackson, a noted Boston chemist, eventually analyzed the
fragment he immediately recognized its meteoritic character. After
receiving confirmation from W.K. Haidinger, an international authority
on meteorites, Jackson hurriedly began corresponding with Evans, who had
returned to his residence in Washington, D.C. Jackson's enthusiastic
inquiries led Evans to self-assuredly describe the appearance and size
of the parent meteorite and its general location. He claimed there would
not be "the least difficulty" relocating it, and he eagerly offered to
return to Oregon to recover the specimen for the Smithsonian
Institution.
Aided by petitions from the Boston Society of Natural History and the
Acaderny of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Jackson and Evans launched
an aggressive campaign to lobby Congress to fund the expedition.
Momentum built quickly, but it halted abruptly with the almost
simultaneous firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and Evans's death
from pneumonia the following day. Since Congress soon became embroiled
in Civil War preparations, and Evans had never prepared a map
pinpointing where he had found the meteorite, all official efforts to
retrieve it were dropped. But eventually word began to spread that there
was a huge, lost meteorite lying somewhere on a mountainside near Port
Orford, and nearby residents began combing the hills for it.
Best wishes,
Bernd
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