Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Odessa Meteor Crater
March 13, 2002

“The meteor crater offers travelers little. It creates ill will with most tourists that venture there.” The editorial in the May 17th, 1986 Odessa American bluntly reports the prevailing attitude of its worth, despite the honor awarded in 1965 by then Secretary of the Interior, Stwewart Udall, who proclaimed the crater a Registered Natural Landmark.

The Odessa Meteor Crater is a small shallow pit surrounded by a wire fence, with pumpjacks and other oilfield structures close by. Household garbage and construction debris along the entrance road disgusts any visitor. Five months out of the year, the blistering Texas heat helps convince a visitor of the ludicrousness of considering the site a tourist destination. Nevertheless, a second interpretive building is being built at the crater. The first visitor's center was unmanned and was destroyed by vandals within ten years of its construction. Attorney Tom Rodman of Odessa has been the instigator of every attempt at promoting the site since the 1950's. His life-long devotion to the effort is an inspiration.

From 1939 into 1942 researchers dug several trenches and a 164-foot shaft as they sought to understand the Ice Age event. Since then, university professors of several disciplines and NASA scientists have spent hours of research at the site, as reported in the Odessa American. The Ector County Library staff report that every year several dozen requests for information are received from around the world.

As a field botanist and amateur ecologist I personally found much of interest at the crater. The gravelly soils above the crater contain a comprehensive array of the plant species that prefer that habitat. The layers of rock tilted by the meteor's impact provide many crevices for lizards, snakes, packrats, and spiders. The tilted rocks, draped with the twisted forms of desert vegetation, gave ample opportunity for landscape photography. The half-dozen interpretative signs along the trail through the crater telling about the work of the scientists tickled my curiosity, so I later ventured to the Ector County Library to find out more about the history of the researchers.

The crater was first discovered in 1892, by a local rancher, but for years the crater was believed to be a "blow-out " hole caused by natural gas trapped below the surface erupting due to pressure. In the 1920's the owner of the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona visited, and recognized it as a meteor crater. The researchers of the 1940's used an early version of a metal detector and found many tons of meteorite fragments scattered over two square miles. They also found that several other craters once existed, but were filled up by the blowing West Texas sand.

Early tourist development plans included digging three observation tunnels deep underground to show meteorites in place. The above ground area was to be a "shooting star park," but no further descriptions of this pipedream was located at the library. Early newspaper reports indicated that the 164 foot shaft hit a large meteorite, and that drillers could see it shining like a mirror, giving birth to the illusion that the hole was filling with water. It was even given the moniker of "The Thunderbird." This meteorite later proved to be the result of active imaginations. No meteorites were found in the crater, for the meteor exploded before it could impact. The smaller craters are impact craters dug out by pieces of the meteor that penetrated the atmosphere.

In the larger crater several fossilized remains of prehistorical animals lay buried until the research of the 1940's. The brochure available at the site has an imagination-stirring drawing of the meteors plunging through the air causing mammoths to stampede in fear. One of the articles in the Ector County Library reports that the landscape of the time was somewhat marshy, but did not give any evidence to support that theory. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene, most of the Llano Estacado was post oak savannah, according to the folks at the Lubbock Lake Landmark in Lubbock.

The ugly monotony of the Llano Estacado is always the initial impression of a visitor. The joy of intellectual curiosity is one of the lessons that our landscape can teach visitors. I am sure that there will always be visitors that say, "What a bunch of boring nothing!" Anyone who says that, though, is merely reflecting a personal unwillingness to engage their mind.