[meteorite-list] Re: Barringer Meteor $$$$

From: Bob Martino <martino.6_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:25:37 2004
Message-ID: <006201c315d5$0eab71c0$0300000a_at_TheMonolith>

All,

With apologies to the eloquent Mr. Schoner, I must present a dissenting (or
at least balancing) opinion.

With regard to the Mining Act under which the Barringer family obtained the
crater, it was in fact legal and in fact proper. The mining act only says
that you must _try_ to extract minerals from the land for a specific time
period. After that, the land becomes yours. Daniel Barringer did, by God,
try his damndest to extract minerals. He actually sunk most of his fortune
into it, eventually going broke. But it was mined for the proper amount of
time under the law and so became his. You might make the case that the law
is bad and allows public property to pass into private hands without just
compensation to the government (and I might agree with you). Even so, it is
the law of the land and the letter as well as spirit of that law was met by
Mr. Barringer. As a point of fact, almost anyone living out west does so on
land that used to be owned by the government but was essentially _given_
away to the first settlers and homesteaders.

I think that (at this time at least) making the crater a National Park or
National Monument would be a mistake.

I've visited the crater twice now and each time I've been impressed with the
great job the company is doing running the whole operation. On my first
visit I expected a typical tourist trap. Stupid plastic "Indian tomahawks"
and other inane items in the gift shop, for example. While there is a little
of this, most of what they sell is good, interesting, and even educational.
If you tell them you're a teacher they even will mail to you a package of
information, books, and pictures. What tourist trap does that? Also, the
tours were not lame and cheezy affairs given by a bored guide with a poor
attitude and worse diction. Both times my guide for the rim walk was quite
knowledgeable and interesting. At the end of my first tour I told the guide
I worked at an observatory. He took out of his pocket the magnet that he'd
drug through an ant hill during the tour. He picked off a few dozen
authentic ant-mined meteorite specimens and gave them to me in a plastic
wrapper from a cigarette pack. That was so cool. They also have a short
movie about the crater which plays every 20 minutes or so and it's very well
done also. High production values do not come cheap. On my second visit I
found that they'd re-done the entire exhibit hall with cool interactive
displays and hands-on activities. This sort of very professional exhibit
development also does not come cheap either. Trust me. I've done a lot of
exhibit creation on a tiny budget and I know how that looks.

For more than a decade the budget for the National Park Service has been cut
every year while the number of parks and monuments has grown. Add in
inflation and you quickly see why the NPS has a backlog of almost a quarter
of a billion dollars in desperately needed repairs and infrastructure
improvements that simply cannot be paid for. If the NPS took over Meteor
Crater then in a few years the beautiful building would begin to fall apart
and even more poaching would occur due to lack of staffing.

Indeed, the Barringer family _tried_ to return the land to the government!
When the Federal Government said, "No thanks" they tried to give it to the
State of Arizona. Arizona also declined. Everyone saw it as a worthless
white-elephant-like piece of God-forsaken desert. Now that Meteor Crater
Enterprises has made it into something worth having, we want to take it away
from them?

So you say the admission fee is too high? Why? To me it seems in line with
other tourist attractions around the country. So what if you can enter Grand
Canyon for $20 a car load? You don't actually believe that the park can
cover _all_ of its costs at that admission price, do you? Meteor Crater
doesn't receive any public money like the parks do. It's for-profit. Grand
Canyon is non-profit. There are different economics at play here. Meteor
Crater cannot run on deficit spending. And it isn't wrong for them to want
to make a profit. Let me say that again. It is not wrong for a private
for-profit company to make a profit from the use of its assets. That's
Capitalism at work, isn't it?

OK, so MCE doesn't like the late Dr. Nininger. Actually, they have good
reason. He did indeed take meteorites off their private property and sell
them. That's stealing. Whatever else the Dr. did, whatever good he did,
whatever research he accomplished, he did steal meteorites from the
Barringer family. Answer me this everyone: If you owned a large piece of
land that had meteorites on it, what would you do about people sneaking in
and taking them? Don't call it "poaching" (in quotation marks as if to say
"It's not really poaching"). Call it stealing. That's what it is. I know
that if God dropped a bunch of meteorite fragments on land that I owned, I'd
guard them carefully and God help whoever tried to take them! Now imagine
that you opened a tourist attraction on your meteorite-covered property
(let's say an impact left a crater). Someone then comes by and places a
competing attraction RIGHT NEXT DOOR where people could look onto your land
and see your crater and then go into the gift shop and buy meteorites stolen
from you. How would you feel? What would you do?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bash Dr. Nininger. He was a great man
who accomplished a lot of good science throughout a hard life filled with
adversity. I'm just saying that the attitudes of the managers of the crater
have good reasons behind them.

Given the above, the attitude of Meteor Crater Enterprises toward hard
research into the strewn field seems easier to understand. The American
Meteorite Survey sells meteorites too. Having a meteorite dealer search
around the crater collecting what he finds... I'm not sure that I'd allow it
if I were in charge. The fact that Steve was a friend of Dr. Nininger just
makes it worse.

By the way, Steve, I have to call you on an inconsistency. You criticized
MCE for allowing poachers to steal meteorites and sell them at rock shops
along the highway while destroying strewn-field data. But you also
criticized them for their attempts to stop the poaching. I'm afraid you
can't have it both ways.

And there is another entirely different reason why the MCE people might not
like Steve's research. Lawsuits. What if Steve or one of his assistants got
hurt? Meteor Crater was sued some time ago because a _stupid_ woman wearing
sandals tried to hike around the crater rim even though she was warned not
to. Of course she got hurt. Of course, it was the fault of MCE for not
physically stopping her from doing something stupid. MCE's insurance company
was going to refuse them any more coverage unless they prevented _everyone_
from going outside while at the rim. Without insurance coverage MCE wouldn't
be able to legally operate at all. MCE was finally able to persuade their
carrier to allow them to give tours on the rim as long as the hike wasn't
more than 1/4 mile long and two guides were present at all times. MCE might
simply be unable to comply with Steve's request because of liability
reasons. It's sad, but such are the times we live in.

It's a shame that Steve can't do his research. I feel for him. Also, I agree
that the crater itself should be public owned again, IF there was assurance
that it would be properly funded and well-managed. Unfortunately, that is
unlikely given the recent history of the NPS and Congressional funding.
Since we don't live in a perfect world, I have to say that in my opinion the
crater is in pretty good hands. Poaching may still be a problem, but it
would be worse under NPS jurisdiction. The admission charge might be a
little steep, but it's not out of line for a once-in-a-lifetime visit.

-----
Bob Martino, Tucson, AZ

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.
Received on Thu 08 May 2003 10:45:25 PM PDT