[meteorite-list] Odessa Meteor Crater Sparks Interest Of Attorney

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:55:48 2004
Message-ID: <200201190116.RAA19988_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.oaoa.com/news/nw011702b.htm

Meteor Crater Sparks Interest Of Attorney
By Ruth Friedberg
Odessa American
January 17, 2002

For most of his life, Tom Rodman has been interested in a 50,000-year-old
hole in the ground - the Odessa meteor crater.

His family moved to Odessa in 1932. They had land near the crater, located
south of town.

"The crater is just an interesting thing," said Rodman, who is an Odessa
attorney. "We used to go down there in high school. It was timbered with
ladders connecting different floors and levels" allowing people to get down
to the bottom of the pit.

"Unfortunately, in the early '50s, the timbers burned or were set on fire
and are now covered with charcoal," he said.

The University of Texas Bureau of Economic Geology did research on the
crater site looking for the mass of the meteorite from September 1939 to
September 1941, Rodman said. The work was a cooperative venture that also
involved federal, state and Ector County agencies.
Glen Evans was the chief geologist for UT Bureau of Economic Geology, which
investigates and reports on geological features.

"But they know now with so much heat and energy generated, the meteorite was
vaporized," Rodman said.

The family that owns the meteor crater in Arizona also came to Odessa trying
to find the meteorite mass in the 1950s. It is speculated that the crater in
Arizona and the one in Odessa were made by the same meteor fall, Evans said.

The UT Bureau of Economic Geology found four small craters buried under
sediment, according to the Occasional Papers of the Strecker Museum, put out
by Baylor University. When first formed, the craters were funnel-shaped
depressions, the largest of which was about 550 feet in diameter and 100
feet deep.

More than 100,000 cubic yards of crushed rock was spewed from the crater
after the impact of the meteor, according to a pamphlet on the crater. The
main crater was eventually filled to within six feet of the level of the
surrounding plain.

Evans said when the meteor originally got into the Earth's atmosphere at
very great height and "incredible velocity," the pressure of the atmosphere
caused it to break up.

The crater now looks like a shallow nearly circular depression surrounded by
a low, rock-buttressed rim. The smaller craters were "so completely buried
that their existence was not suspected until they were exposed" by the UT
group, the pamphlet said.

Although UT officials found no meteor mass, many nickel-iron meteorites were
found in an area of about 100 miles around the crater, according to the
Occasional Papers of the Striker Museum.
"We thought it was a terribly exciting spot," Evans said.

Over the years, Rodman said the area has been "pretty well cleared out with
metal detectors." At the time the meteorite hit, it was a wet period.

"Fifty-thousand years ago, it was probably wet and marshy," Rodman said.
When UT drilled, they hit what they thought was the meteorite's main mass at
165 feet. They got to what Evans realized was the bottom of the crater and
found a "real hard conglomerate."

When Rodman got interested in the crater, he contacted Evans, who was living
in Midland at the time.

Rodman said about half the meteorites were put in a small museum at the
crater site. The museum survived until vandalism got so bad the museum
couldn't be maintained.

He said half the collection was stolen, so the remainder was moved to the
Ector County Library where it would be safe.

The one-story concrete structure that had been the museum was replaced with
a picnic bench when the county took over. The land was deeded to the county
by T.P. Land Trust in November 1978.
Through the years, Rodman said he has worked through the Chamber of
Commerce's meteor crater committee and tried to get the state to take it
over as a park.

In 1999, State Rep. Buddy West (R-Odessa) got a $500,000 state appropriation
to build a museum and caretaker's quarters on site, Rodman said.

Construction started in June 2001 and is supposed to be finished in early
February. Rodman said an estimated 9,000 people a year visit the site.

Rodman said a lot of material from the Odessa meteorite will be on display,
along with numerous other meteorites.
Received on Fri 18 Jan 2002 08:16:04 PM PST