august 5, 2025

this impact site of a crater in the middle-of-nowhere, Arizona is really fucking cool!!!!

but also, is currently still in the throes of a Succession-meets-Holes human interest story.

this guy is Daniel Barringer--he's a mining investor who bought the land containing the impact crater. He was of the controversial (at the time) opinion that this impact crater was, in fact, from a meteor and not a volcanic explosion. but instead of using his ye olden days big bucks to try and preserve the crater, he started mining--he was convinced he could find the meteorite itsself and make billions of dollars off of the giant chunk of iron.

he totally bankrupted himself and his family digging for it. almost 30 years into the effort, he hired a scientist who informed him that the meteor was probably vaporizedon impact and that there was no giant iron chunk to find. he died 10 days after hearing the news.

some ancillary drama surrounding the site:

A "geologist" named Harvey Nininger tried to make the crater a national monument/public museum against the family's will. An extremely puzzling and career-halting move motivated by what can only be described as an incredibly convoluted dick-swinging contest with an on-again/off-again rival colleague?? While i think it sucks the family decided not to make the site a national monument and keep the museum and crater private, Nininger is by no means a trustworthy narrator. From what i can tell, he was more of a meteorite salesman than a scientist xD

now the family owns and operates the overpriced private museum, which has a weird videogame with a scary judy-hopps wannabe jackalope and an alien-on-a-bench photo opp. it's a pretty cool visit, the crater itsself is extremely awe inspiring! but i have a feeling that if the family could legally open a juvenile detention center to help them dig for scraps of iron, they would.

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