[meteorite-list] Re-Post Nininger Moment #8

From: Rob Wesel <*Nakhladog_at_meteoritecentral.com*> Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:46 2004 Message-ID: <001b01c2e4dc$2a095d30$4e9fe70c_at_GOLIATH> · Nakhladog_at_meteoritecentral.com

--
Rob Wesel
------------------
We are the music makers...and we are the dreamers of the dreams.
Willy Wonka, 1971
----- Original Message -----
From: "almitt" <almitt_at_kconline.com>
To: <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: <almitt_at_kconline.com>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 4:52 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Re-Post Nininger Moment #8
> Subject: A Nininger Moment 8
> Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 06:13:57 -0500
> From: almitt <almitt_at_kconline.com>
> To: Alan Mitterling <ALMitt_at_kconline.com>
>
> Back in the middle to late 1800's as cowboys rode their horses across the
> prairie in what is now Kiowa County, they came across from time to time
> heavy black rocks scattered across the buffalo grass. There were no other
> such stones found else where so the black stones were a bit out of place.
> The stones were often used for weight lifting  and shot-put
demonstrations.
> At the end of the nineteenth century Frank Kimberly brought his wife Mary
> to homestead the area. One of the first things she noticed was the black
rusty
> rocks that were about in the area. She informed her husband that the rocks
> were not ordinary but rather meteorites and began to keep a pile of them
> near the house they had  made. She was often laughed at and kidded as the
> pile grew larger. The rocks were considered somewhat useful for a number
> of chores that the locals had in the area as no other rocks were around.
>
> As a child in Iowa she and her class were taken to a railroad station to
> view a great meteorite in transport to an eastern museum. The experience
was
> one she had not forgotten and how the meteorite had looked to her when she
> was quite young. As Frank plowed the prairie ground he would often plough
> up new specimens and Mary would drag them back to the pile, although this
> was beginning to become an irritation to him as the pile grew. Mary wrote
a
> number of letters to various places in hopes of finding someone that might
be
> interested in her meteorites. Finally after five years a Dr. F.W. Cragen
at
> Washburn College in Kansas agreed to look at the collection. When he
> arrived he was amazed and delighted at the pile of specimens and paid her
> several hundred dollars for the better half of the specimens. This sell
was
> enough to buy a neighboring property where more of the specimens were
> found. As word got out other scientists followed Dr. Cragen's lead and
came
> to buy specimens and a brisk market was generated for a number of years.
> Frank had quickly changed his tune after the first sell his wife had made,
and
> went out prospecting on a more regular basis. Over a ton and a half had
been
> sold just past the turn of the century by the Kimberly's Their place was
known
> as the Kansas Meteorite Farm.
>
> Nininger had met the Kimberly's in 1923 and bought many specimens from
> them as no interest had been made in regards to the remaining specimens
> for some twenty years. This increased Nininger's young collection at the
time
> and help him finance other searches during that time. More than three and
a
> half tons total had been recovered from the Brenham fall and no doubt more
> picked up and not recorded. In 1929 while visiting the Kimberly's on their
> farm Nininger discovered that some of the masses were in a buffalo wallow
> which peaked his interest of a possible meteorite crater. Nininger was
shown
> a shallow depression that was forty feet wide. The rim around the edge
peak
> his interest even more. Nininger later went back and excavation the crater
> called Haviland using teams of horses and road scrapers.  Each time the
> crater was cut and scraped detailed information was noted of features and
> places meteorites were found as well as weights and condition of specimens
> which were mostly falling apart by their stay on Earth in a wet
environment.
> The crater formed an elongated bowl of such. Nininger went on to write
> several papers on meteorite craters even though at the time they were not
> well established. One such paper at the American Association For The
> Advancement Of  Science in 1933 was titled Meteor Craters vs Steam
> blowouts.
>
>
>
>
> Source: Find A Falling Star                By H.H. Nininger
>
> --AL Mitterling
>
>
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