Wrapping up my time at Meteor Crater and the rest of the day.
Here are some other facts about Meteor Crater that I found quite interesting (including some photos) and that I hope you will, too. The crater has a diameter of nearly three quarters of a mile and reaches a depth of 560 feet (making it five feet deeper than the Washington Monument is tall). The circumference of the crater is approximately 2 and a third miles.
Although pottery shards at the rim provide evidence that the crater was known to the Native Americans of the area, the site went undiscovered by western culture for centuries. You see, unless it’s viewed from the air or standing on its rim, it looks like little more than an ordinary ridge rising 150 feet or so from the broad surrounding plain. Spanish explorers, westward migrants, traders, trappers, and all manner of people passed it by and ignored it. Here are two aerial photos downloaded from Wikipedia that might aid your understanding.
Those are the San Francisco Mountains in the distant background of the bottom picture.
Curiously, it’s had many names since its “discovery” sometime between 1870 and 1891. Early on it was called Coon Mountain Crater and later Diablo Canyon Crater for some nearby geological features and, as I noted previously, most scientists today refer to it as Barringer Crater in honor of Daniel Barringer. I find the coincidence of the USGS official name of Meteor Crater almost diabolically amusing given the nearly three-quarter century debate over the crater’s origin.
You see, the name is wholly unrelated to its extraterrestrial origin. The crater is about two thirds of the way between Flagstaff and Winslow. The common practice of the United States Board on Geographic Names is to tag natural features with the name of the nearest post office. And, as you’ve probably discerned by now, at one time, the nearest post office was named Meteor. (Barringer, who had some connection with President Theodore Roosevelt, had asked him to authorize establishing a post office named Meteor at a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line about six miles north of the crater. Roosevelt granted this request in 2006. The post office closed for lack of use just two months after Arizona became the 48th state.)
There was another reason that Shoemaker’s presence wasn’t mere curiosity. Shoemaker founded and was the first director of the USGS Astrogeology Research Program. He was deeply involved in NASA’s Lunar Ranger missions that provided the first close-up images of the moon. He also had a part in training NASA’s astronauts and used the Barringer site in preparation for their landing.
As for the impact itself, the crater is approximately 50,000 years old and was blasted by a nickel-iron meteorite between 150 and 160 feet across. The most current modeling shows the impact speed to have been eight miles per second. (How fast is eight miles per second? At that speed, starting in Washington, DC you could travel to Los Angeles in about six minutes, to get to Paris, France you’d need about eight minutes, Beijing 15, and Melbourne 21.)
If you’re wondering about the movie I mentioned above, the source of the line of lyrics that heads this section provides the answer but if you don’t know it or don’t want to look it up, I’ll maintain the suspense a bit longer but will provide the answer at the end of this post.
‘Cause I’m on the edge of darkness.
This header isn’t an accurate description of the sky when I left Meteor Crater but it certainly was by the time I reached Williams and my peaceful train car room. Come to think of it, I should probably write a bit more about Williams before I leave tomorrow. As I noted in my brief history of Route 66, Williams was the last holdout town before I-40 was completed and the road fully decommissioned – as the town reminds you.
Because that event occurred late in 1984 and Angel Delgadillo began the movement to keep Route 66 alive just three years later, Williams, which was also well-served by its proximity to Grand Canyon and being the starting point for the Grand Canyon Railroad, likely felt the least impact from the temporary loss of the Mother Road.
There is, shall I say, no shortage of neon in Williams.
There’s also no shortage of kitsch. Whether that’s the rooftop Coca Cola roadster at Cruiser’s Cafe,
The punderfully named gift shop,
or the ultimate in tackiness, the early evening “Wild West Show”.
The first of my two dinners in Williams was at the Red Raven – which bills itself as offering “a casual fine dining experience unique to the area” and that one of the women working in the office at the motel told me was, without question, by far her favorite restaurant in town. I ordered the Red Raven Pasta with portabella mushroom instead of chicken and a Grand Canyon Amber Ale (because it’s brewed locally and I like to drink the local brews) and I’d more or less forgotten it by the time I returned to my room.
On night two, I took the advice of the woman from Pete’s Gas Station Museum and ate at the Fiesta Grill.
Though not made table side, their salsa was, as it had been at the restaurant in Tucson, homemade. It had a different blend of spices but was tasty in its own right. Otherwise, while the food was plentiful and not too expensive as I’d been promised, the fare was mostly standard “Ameri-Mex” – tacos, burritos, fajitas, and the like. What I recall most from the meal was the feeling that I needed to walk it off.
By the time I pulled back into the motel, I’d driven more than 500 miles for the day, some of which came, of course, from first driving too far west (Bullhead City) then too far east (Meteor Crater.) Though there will be some backtracking tomorrow, I’ll drive less than one-third that distance.
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SONG KEY:
“Though she was born a long, long time ago” – The Beatles – Your Mother Should Know – Chosen as a reference to Route 66 as the Mother Road and its completion 80 years ago.
“Goin’ places that I’ve never been” – Willie Nelson – On the Road Again – Seemed appropriate.
“Just as far and as fast as I can, uh huh” – Big Head Todd and the Monsters – Seven State Lines – I know I only crossed one state line but that is the section about Todd and, if not a monster, at least the Giganticus Headicus.
“But I wanna know for sure” – Wild Thing – The Troggs – Encapsulated the destination and my doubts.
(Delgadillo’s) “Diner over on the edge of town” – Bruce Springsteen – Girls in Their Summer Clothes – In the song, it’s Frankie’s Diner but Delgadillo’s is a sort of diner and it’s more or less on the edge of town.
“That weren’t no DJ that was hazy cosmic jive” – David Bowie – Starman – which is also the name of the 1984 movie starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen with the climactic scene filmed at Meteor Crater. (This is the scene.)
” ‘Cause I’m on the edge of darkness” – Cat Stevens – Peace Train – Dusk and staying on a train. Once again, it simply seemed fitting.
(And yes, there is an oblique reference to Lyin’ Eyes by the Eagles in the very first section header in this series of posts.)