Discovery on the Frass Ranch
The meteorite was discovered on the Frass Ranch in the
winter of '70-'71. My great aunt and I were feeding cattle that winter and
had been visiting every pasture to bring "cake" to the cattle and to make sure
they had plenty of water. There are no rocks on the Frass Ranch, since it
is made up almost entirely of sand hills and quickly eroding intermittent
creeks. When we turned north in the North Meadow the morning of the rocks
discovery, we both saw the rock from more than half a mile away. The red
rock stood out like a sore thumb, in the short yellow grass of winter. We
retrieved the rock, not knowing at the time the great significance it would one
day reveal.
If you look in the picture above, you will see a pair of
green trees at the left of center. Now look to the right and see the next pair
of green trees. If you look at the exact center between them and above the small
sliver of sand, you will be looking at the spot where the meteorite landed.
This entire area is comprised of sand hills. The 100 and 200-year floods that
expand outside the normally dry creek bed created the bottom section. On those
occasions, the bottom is made flat by the flooding. If you look carefully, you
can see where the creek flows from the left side of the picture (North) and
continues to near the middle of the picture. Then it meanders back to the North
and then back South again where it passes the trees on the left and then the
trees on the right.
The day we found the rock we were coming from the next pasture beyond this one.
So we would have been coming towards the camera just over the right pair of
trees. Then as we got into this pasture, we turned north and that is when we saw
the rock. We drove immediately to the rock and I carefully examined the area to
be sure there were no footprints or other methods by which it could have come to
this location. The only thing I found was a small depression about a foot away
that was about an inch deep. There were no footprints of any kind. The area was
dry and so there was a crust across the sandy area. Nothing had been disturbed
for at least 20 feet in every direction. My aunt was not a patient person and
was mostly interested in cattle, so she gave me only a few minutes to look at
the site before she began honking and made me get back
In the early 1970's, I worked on a ranch in the most northeastern part of the panhandle of Texas. The ranch was about 20 miles from the nearest town, which is Canadian, Texas. Although I was born in Canadian, I have spent only about 4 years of my life actually living near there
My great aunt owned the ranch at the time and she and I lived on the ranch "alone." Our daily routine was very predictable and involved finding all the cattle and making sure they were fed properly. It was in the middle of the winter in 1971 (I believe) when we rounded a curve in the road and both immediately saw an object about half a mile away. Both of us knew that it had not been there before and my aunt asked me what it could be. The only thing I could think of was a meteorite, since it hadn't been there yesterday or any of the hundreds of days before, so I told her it was a meteorite. I asked if I could have it and she said yes, since it was only a rock to her.
Over the years, I have discovered that many scientists,
when confronted with evidence they don't like, will then begin an attack upon
the person making the claims. When I found this meteorite, I was just a
simple cowboy and only knew that any rock falling from space would be a
meteorite. I didn't know this meteorite was different until many years
later as I began to compare it with other meteorites discovered around the
world. Since the evidence of having the rock "appear" one day on the Frass
Ranch is partly crucial to my case, several scientist have "questioned" my
integrity or the accuracy of my story. In response, I have offered to
undertake any lie-detector or other test that might determine if I am telling
the truth. In addition, there remains numerous people that have seen this
rock since it's discovery and who can offer further evidence of the rock's fall
on the Frass Ranch in the early 1970's.