[meteorite-list] Slice of Willamette Meteorite Returning Back to Oregon

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Apr 17 01:40:42 2006
Message-ID: <200604170424.VAA03854_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1145066110126990.xml&coll=7

Slice of meteorite headed for air museum
RICHARD L. HILL
The Oregonian
April 15, 2006

A sliver of the Willamette Meteorite is returning to Oregon -- only 30
miles from where it spent thousands of years.

Officials with the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville said Friday
that Delford Smith bought a 7.5-inch-long piece of the famed meteorite
at an auction earlier this week in New York City.

Museum spokeswoman Nicole Wahlberg said Smith, the owner and founder of
Evergreen International Aviation, bought the piece at the suggestion of
U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., then donated it to the museum.

Katherine Huit, the museum's collections director, said the space rock
will be displayed in a building that will be built next year.

Darryl Pitt, curator of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, which
owned the 4.5-ounce fragment, said the rock sold for nearly $12,000 --
more than four times the price of gold per ounce.

The piece is from the 15 1/2-ton Willamette Meteorite, which was
deposited on a hillside in West Linn by enormous ice-age floods from
Montana about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. It's the largest meteorite
found in the United States and the sixth largest in the world.

Oregon Iron and Steel, which owned the land that the meteorite was on,
sold the huge space rock to New York socialite Sarah Dodge for $26,000.
In 1906, she donated it to the American Museum of Natural History in New
York City, where it is on display.

Willamette University is donating a piece of the meteorite from its
collection to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in a ceremony
Monday. The tribe considers the meteorite a sacred treasure.
Received on Mon 17 Apr 2006 12:24:19 AM PDT