The mile-wide Arizona Meteor Crater makes an excellent side trip when you’re traveling on I-40 in Arizona.
By Marcus Woolf
The Arizona Meteor Crater is nearly a mile wide and more than 500 feet deep.
As a child of the ‘80s, I grew up watching sci-fi movies set in mysterious landscapes, from Devil’s Tower in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to California’s Redwood forests in “E.T.”
But I was especially fascinated by Starman. The 1984 film stars Jeff Bridges, an alien who enlists the help of a widow named Jenny Hayden (played by Karen Allen) to speed him from Wisconsin to the massive Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, so he can rendezvous with his mother ship.
In the final scene—a 5-hankie tearjerker, by the way—Hayden and the alien stand on the floor of the crater and exchange sorrowful goodbyes with snow falling all around. While the sad farewell moved me, I was more intrigued by the fact that somewhere out West there was a huge hole in the ground created by a fiery object from space. At the time, I was pretty geeked up on space stuff. I was a native of Huntsville, the “Rocket City,” and my grandfather told me stories of working for Wernher von Braun during the Saturn V program. I attended Space Camp during the second year of its existence and watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. But I’d have to wait decades to see the Meteor Crater.
The Holsinger Meteorite is what remains of the 150-foot-wide meteor that hit Earth.
When my wife and I eventually made it to the crater, it was all I’d hoped it would be. When you travel through Arizona on I-40, this makes a fine side trip. Located smack dab in the middle of nowhere, about 6 miles south of the interstate, the Meteor Crater has observation decks on the rim that provide awesome views of the massive depression. Plus, the adjoining Barringer Space Museum details everything you’d want to know about the site and meteors in general.
Stretching nearly a mile across and measuring more than 500 feet deep, the crater was formed about 50,000 years ago by an asteroid traveling around 26,000 miles per hour. Most of it vaporized in Earth’s atmosphere, but a nickel and iron meteorite chunk 150 feet wide slammed into the ground with the force of more than 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. In the museum, you can see the Holsinger Meteorite, a remaining piece of what hit. When you visit, schedule enough time to see the museum’s movie, “Impact: The Mystery of Meteor Crate.” We also highly recommend joining a guided hike along the crater rim, as the site’s interpreters will share all sorts of interesting facts.
One of the fascinating aspects of the Meteor Crater is that it served as a training site for the Apollo 11 astronauts, and a space capsule used for training is displayed outside the museum.
Random Facts:
Every 50,000 years, Earth is hit by a meteor large enough to form the Meteor Crater in Arizona.
At the time of the impact, the crater was about 700 feet deep, but it’s now about 550 feet deep due to erosion.
Meteorites can originate from collisions in the asteroid belt, or they can be fragments of comets or result from planets breaking up
In 1980, scientists suggested that a meteor 6 miles in diameter struck the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, wiping out 70 percent of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.
When You Go:
The Meteor Crater is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. (It's open until 12 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day and closed Christmas Day.)
Admission Prices:
Adults (age 13 to 59) $25 on site; $23 online
Seniors (age 60+) $23 on site; $18 online
Juniors (age 6 to 12) $16 on site, $14 online
Non-Active Duty U.S. Military/Veterans (with I.D.) $16
Active Duty U.S. Military FREE
For more information, visit meteorcrater.com; call 928-289-5898; e-mail: info@meteorcrater.com
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