| The nearest place to camp
from the Petrified Forest is Holbrook, about 40 miles west on I40 (which
follows the same route as old Route 66). This was the town hall/courthouse
and is now the museum and visitor centre. |  |
 | .It
was built in 1899 but was put on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. The American concept of history is very different to ours! |
| The museum has the usual
collection of rooms and artefacts from grandmother's time. Some of the
things the pioneers brought out here were remarkable. But a lot of things
arrived along with the railroad. |  |
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We saw, but didn't visit, a museum of strange medical instruments a few
weeks back. I'm not sure that I understand the principles underlying the
operation of this machine. But somebody thought they did - this new fangled
electricity can do all manner of things....... |
| There is quite a
collection of early cameras. I remember my father having one a bit like
this. |  |
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These were less common in my childhood - a set of branding irons! This is
cattle country with cowboys (and Indians!). |
| And in line with the
rocks and soils in the area there are several fossils. I've no idea what it
was and neither do the experts - they think it is an entirely new genus. It
almost certainly doesn't exist now. |  |
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Outside on the high street (Route 66) is this fence made of petrified wood.
Although it is now illegal to collect it from the National Park, there are
still large areas outside the park where fossilised wood is still emerging
from the sandstone, and large quantities were collected in the past, so
there are lots of places offering it for sale. |
| It must be fairly common
because some of the walls in the town are made with it. Well there are very
few trees around, they had to build with something. |  |
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The Santa Fe railroad made this town, along with dozens of others across the
USA. This is a fairly busy twin track line with long trains every
10-15 mins. This one was very short and only warranted two engines instead
of five. |
| There must be more
statues of buffalo than there are buffalo left. Especially if you exclude
the farmed animals. |  |
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This is Navajo County and even the bridges carrying the I40 past the town
have Navajo symbols built into the decoration. You can see this shape in
many of their rugs. |
13th June 2008 - Meteor Crater AZ
| Just off I40 on the way
from Holbrook to Flagstaff is Meteor Crater. This is the first place in the
world proved to have been formed by an impact from an object from outer
space rather than volcanic action as originally thought. |  |
 |
This is a piece of the meteorite which landed here about 50,000 years ago.
It consisted of a lump of asteroid containing mostly iron and nickel about
150 ft in diameter weighing several hundred thousand tons and travelling at
26,000 mph. It fragmented on impact and this is the largest piece found. |
| The crater it formed is
over 700 feet deep and 4000 feet across. 175 million tons of sandstone and
limestone were instantly displaced and showered over about a seven mile
radius. |  |
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In 1902 Daniel Barringer, a Philadelphia mining engineer, became interested
in the crater, believing it to contain a rich source of iron because he
thought a meteor was buried below its floor. Earlier experts had decided the
crater was the result of volcanic action. Over the next 26 years he dug 27
separate mineshafts in the crater attempting to find the mother lode but
finding only sandstone and clay. The remaining shafts are enclosed on the
crater bottom along with an ancient oil tank and pump. |
| He lived in a small house
on the canyon rim from which he could keep an eye on the 50 or so men who
worked there. The house collapsed after a fire many years later. |  |
 |
At the side of the house is a cave where dynamite and other items needing to
be kept cool were stored. |
| If you look carefully you
can just make out the water pipe down into the crater going down from the
rim at a 45 degree angle. What is even less obvious is that this was also
the mule wagon path down which everything entering the crater was hauled.
They used mules because they are more sure-footed than horses. |  |
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Barringer eventually ran out of money and broke his last drill bit when he
hit a fragment of meteor 1376 ft down. He died in 1929 but because he had
mined the area continuously for so may years he was deemed to own it. His
descendants still own it and have built a visitor centre with museum for the
large numbers of visitors. It lies in the middle of a 300,000 acre cattle
ranch, one of the largest in northern Arizona. The fact that the crater
was formed by a meteorite was not proven until 1960.
If you look carefully, you can just see the trees on the far rim. They
are over 700 years old and don't grow very fast in these conditions. |
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