Meteor Crater

I-40 Exit 233, Meteor City / Winslow, AZ 86047
Phone: 800-289-5898

East < GO > West

This what you get when a 300,000 ton rock lands in the backyard. The Barringer Meteor Crater is HUGE! I first saw it when my family traveled Route 66 to California for Christmas in 1960 and the image has been stuck in my mind ever since. Take a look at the people on the observation platform in this photo to get an idea of how big the crater is.

It's about 6 miles south of I-40 at I-40 exit 233.
GPS: 35.027451, -111.022372

The floor of the crater is about 570 feet below the rim, about the same as a 50 story building, it's over 4,000 feet across and 2.4 miles in circumference. The rim is about 150 feet above the desert floor, so that makes the bottom of the crater about 400 feet below surrounding landscape. The meteor fell out of the sky 50 - 70,000 years ago, what day of the week that happened is a little unclear.

There's an observation area overlooking the crater. The visitor center and museum have been redesigned a few times over the years. A 1949 article mentioned the construction of a new Meteor Crater Museum. But visitors were apparently being welcomed before that because the same article said that at the time visitors were charged 2 cents ($0.02) each, a fee needed to pay the curators. That kind of indicates there was some kind of earlier visitor facility, but didn't offer any more detail.

Starting from the main observation area you can hike up or down to additional observation spots.

This photo gives you an idea of how far above the desert floor the rim of the crater is. You can see for miles from this height.

This is an always earth bound training space capsule. In the mid 1960s and 70s American Astronauts trained in the Meteor Crater, because the surface was thought to be similar to what they might encounter on the moon.

It's interesting that D. Moreau Barringer started exploring the crater in 1903 but it took the next 60 years for the scientific community to decide this huge hole in was caused by a meteor and wasn't a volcano. Barringer died in 1929 so he never got to hear that news. He had filed a mining claim on the site in hopes of recovering and selling the minerals that arrived with the meteor.

The crater site is still privately owned by the Barringer family as it has been since Mr. Barringer began his work there. Beginning in 1936 there were discussions about the idea of making the crater a National Monument or State or National Park. More formal efforts took place in the late 1940s, but didn't go anywhere. In the mid-1950s there was another unsuccessful attempt led by Dr. Nininger of the American Meteorite Museum. So far none of these efforts have been successful.

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Vintage Advertising Highlights

METEOR CRATER
THE GRAVE OF ARIZONA'S GIANT "METEOR"
WIDTH 4150 FT. - DEPTH 600 FT.
OFFICIAL ENTRANCE ON U.S. 66 - AT METEOR, ARIZ.

Meteor Crater ~ ~ ~ 4150 FT. WIDE ~ 600 FT. DEEP
VIEW OF METEOR CRATER FROM HIGHWAY AT METEOR, ARIZ. ON U.S. 66

METEOR CRATER, ARIZONA
Aerial View from East
This great natural wonder, off U.S. 66 near Winslow, is 570 deep, over 4,000 feet across. Rim rises 170 feet above surrounding plain.

NOTE: There's no description on the back of the first two postcards. I don't have a date for the third postcard but none of the major buildings on the rim were built yet. You can spot the road leading to the crater in this postcard and compare it to the parking lot photo above.
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Photo(s): 2009