[meteorite-list] Apex - Colorado - possible MB correction

From: Walter L. Newton <newtonw2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jul 1 19:27:12 2006
Message-ID: <001a01c69d65$d5bd79a0$6ad70818_at_walter>

Jeff Grossman wanted me to deal directly with Rhian Jones, the AE at MB,
about this subject, so here is an update of what I wrote to Ms. Jones.

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Ms. Jones

I will answer Mr. Grossman's question below by passing this information
directly to you. And then, if you have more questions, please email me any
time and I will try to respond. I suspect if you have read the past emails
on this subject, then you are up to date on the topic.

Matt Morgan is in Wyoming for the holiday, so I cannot ask him where his
text reference to "Apex Gulch" came from. I will cc: him on this and speak
to him when he returns.

But I can try to make things clearer about these name-places.

Apex Park, Apex Gulch, Magic Mountain Archeological Site, the Plains Indian
encampment, all these names refer to the same exact site.

The Indian site was at the mouth of Apex Gulch. Apex Gulch comes down from
the foothills and widens at the end, such as a large river creates a delta.
Here, in Golden Colorado, this place has been refered to the mouth of Apex
Gulch (or just plain Apex Gulch). In 1938 the Plains Indian encampment was
know as Apex Gulch.

For a matter of fact, not to detour to far off course, the plain name APEX
should not be the name reference of the meteorite find at all. The plain
name APEX refers to the frontier town Apex, which sits at the TOP of Apex
Gulch, almost 15 miles going south-west into the foothills. This town is now
one of Colorado's existing ghost towns. The first wagon toll road was
constructed from the mouth of Apex Gulch (in Golden Colorado) up through the
Gulch to Apex and Central city, square one of the Colorado gold rush.

As I was writing this email to you, Jack Murphy called me. As you may know,
he was the curator at the Denver Museum of Natural History for 25 years and
his specialty was geology and meteorites.

He saw my posts on the meteorite list and he wanted to let me know that he
can confirm my placement of the Apex find on this site. Him and I are going
to go to the site and we will get exact coordinates with a GPS. He also has
unpublished written material that can better explain what I have discovered.

He said he originally submitted the meteorite find as the "Apex Gulch" find
but the MB edited that to just Apex, which in itself could cause more
confusion that just the wrong coordinates, since as I said, Apex is a town
many miles away from the find.

So, in a couple of weeks I will have the cornerstone of information that
fill any possible holes in my research.

If you have any question, please email me and I will be glad to answer them.


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When I started this trek last week, I first tried to find Jack Murphy as I
was informed that he could give me the best information on this subject.

Jack said someone on this list passed this discussion on to him and Jack
contacted me. I was so surprised to hear from Mr. Murphy that I didn't catch
the name of the list member who contacted him.

So... my thanks to that list member...

So is looks like Jack Murphy and myself will be going to the site to better
pinpoint the coordinates and we will submit that info (and his proof that
Apex Gulch is the actual find site) to Ms. Jones.

So we may be able to not only get the coordinates updated, but we may be
able to have this find properly named.

And really thanks to the mebers of this list in general. I have had a number
of private emails about this topic and you all have been a GREAT help.

Walter L. Newton
Golden, Co
Received on Sat 01 Jul 2006 07:26:52 PM PDT