MarsMeteorite
	...dedicated to the preservation of miracles in science!
	Contents   Core Samples  Fusion Crust  Age  Chemistry   Martian Dust  Mars Model Local Volcanoes Geology Report  Glass Internal Structure Boundary  Sites Overview  Home  Write NASA

  Landing Site    

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. But I had prayed as a child that God would send me "a piece of space," so I took the whole event as an answer to my childhood prayers. It meant to me that God still answers prayers and that miracles still happen. I have valued it for all these years for that reason only.

If you look in the picture, 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 expanded 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 method 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 to work.