DUANE
Duane's take
Now, what I'm about to tell you comes straight off an official Texas Historical Commission marker, and I'll let the stone do the talkin'. You're out here in Ector County, west Texas, where the land looks like it hasn't changed since the beginning of time. And here's the thing — in one particular stretch of about two square miles, it very nearly hasn't.
Because roughly twenty thousand years ago, something came down out of the sky that this old earth was not ready for. Geologists call it a meteor shower. But don't let that gentle word fool you.
This was no gentle dusting of light across a summer night. This shower was composed of many thousands of individual meteorites — nickel-iron, raining down out of space — of various sizes, scattering across approximately two square miles of what is now West Texas. The smaller ones, which were by far the most numerous, either came to rest right on the earth's surface or settled quietly at the bottom of shallow impact pits in the soil.
But there were several very large meteoritic masses in that shower. And those — those were a different matter entirely. When those large masses struck, they hit with such enormous energy that they didn't just dent the ground.
They penetrated deeply into bedrock. And then they shattered — with explosive force — producing craters at every single place of impact. When freshly formed, those craters were funnel-shaped depressions.
The largest one ran about five hundred and fifty feet in diameter and one hundred feet in depth. And the energy released from that one impact alone ejected more than one hundred thousand cubic yards of crushed rock right out of the earth. Let that settle for a moment.
One hundred thousand cubic yards of rock — gone, just like that, blown clear. The smaller craters nearby range from fifteen to eighteen feet in depth. Modest by comparison.
But still, craters. Still, the mark of something traveling fast and far from the far reaches of our Solar System — astrophysicists say these meteoritic bodies originate from the asteroidal belt located between the planets Jupiter and Saturn. Now, here's where time gets into the story, because time has a way of doing what even a nickel-iron meteorite cannot — it can hide things.
In the ages following their formation, the craters gradually accumulated sediments deposited by wind and water. The main crater was eventually filled to within six feet of the level of the surrounding plain. Today it appears as a shallow, nearly circular depression, surrounded by a low, rock-buttressed rim.
You might drive past it and think — well, that's a curious little dip in the ground. But those smaller associated craters? They were buried so completely that their very existence was not suspected — not by anyone — until they were exposed in excavations made by the University of Texas in the early nineteen forties.
Thousands of years of secrets, kept right under the surface of this West Texas plain, waiting for someone with a shovel and a question. Meteor craters, the marker tells us, are among the rarest and most interesting of land features on this earth. And standing out here in Ector County, with the wind moving across that shallow, nearly circular depression, it's not hard to believe it.
Twenty thousand years ago, the sky fell here. And the ground has been quietly remembering ever since.
What the marker says
East and South (route marked) is located the Odessa Meteor Craters, formed in prehistoric time when a great shower of nickel-iron meteorites collided with the earth. Geologists estimate that the time of the meteor fall was about 20,000 years ago. The shower was composed of many thousands of individual meteorites of various sizes which fell over an area of about 2 square mile. The smaller meteorites, which were by far the most numerous, either came to rest on the earths' surface or at the bottom of shallow impact pits within the soil. there were several very large meteoritic masses in the shower, however, and these struck the earth with such enormous energy that they penetrated deeply into bedrock and shattered with explosive force, thus producing craters in the earth at the places of impact. when freshly formed the craters were funnel-shaped depressions, the largest about 550 feet in diameter and 100 feet in depth. More than 100,000 cubic yards of crushed rock was ejected from this crater by the energy released from the impacting meteoritic mass. Smaller crater in the vicinity of the main crater range from 15 feet 18 feet in depth. In the ages following their formation the craters gradually accumulated sediments deposited by wind and water. The main crater was eventually filled to with 6 feet of the level of the surrounding plain. It now appears as a shallow, nearly circular depression surrounded by a low, rock-buttressed rim. The several smaller associated craters were so completely buried that their existence was not suspected until they were exposed in excavations made by the University of Texas, in the early 1940's. Meteor craters are among the rarest and most interesting of land features. Observations by astrophysicists indicated that meteoritic bodies which strike our earth originate within our Solar System, probably form the steroidal belt located between the planets, Jupiter and Saturn.