Oregon Iron and Steel.
The court found for the land owners and established a precedent that whatever falls from Mars, the moon, or any other distant sphere, whose occupants are not on visiting terms with the people on Earth, becomes a part of the hereditaments of the land on which it may fall. No syndicate from any of the planets having put in a claim for the meteorite, it is now recognized as the property of the owners of the land upon which it was found.
The court valued the meteorite at $150 and gave the company’s owners permission to repossess the stone. Although Ellis Hughes filed an appeal, his claim seemed to be on its final tack. “If the plaintiff (Oregon Iron and Steel) wins out in suit,” reported one paper,“the meteor will be added to the collections at the Portland Museum.”
Then in January 1905, a new lawsuit appeared to further muddy the waters. Two local officials claimed that the meteorite had been stolen not from Oregon Iron and Steel property but from a contiguous parcel they jointly owned, and they pointed to a crater there to prove it. For the court’s pleasure, they produced several witnesses who swore that the stone currently resting on Ellis Hughes’s property had definitely emerged from the officials’ land.
The jury, perhaps influenced by evidence that this second crater had been recently created with dynamite, again ruled for Oregon Iron and Steel. In addition, they re-valuedthe meteorite at a staggering $10,000. Suddenly, everyone from West Linn to the East Coast knew this stone represented something more than a curiosity. The judge placed the object under the protection of the Clackamas County sheriff pending the outcome of Hughes’s appeal, which was still waiting to be scheduled before the state supreme court.
By now it was spring, and people were flocking to nearby Portland for the centennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. As a show of good will, Ellis Hughes and Oregon Iron and Steel mutually agreed that the disputed stone could be carted to Oregon City and displayed on the courthouse square. Local boosters dared to hope that the many visitors drawn “to see the big meteorite will spend thousands of dollars here and the business men will reap the benefit.”
The tourist attraction had hardly begun its journey to the courthouse square, however, when a state judge ruled that it must stop immediately. Its progress was halted next to a farm belonging to the Johnson family. In later years Harold Johnson, then a young boy, recalled with pride how his father was deputized to guard the stone, and how over the next few months his sleep was often interrupted by souvenir hunters who would sneak onto the property, hammers in hand, and attempt to crack off pieces. “The meteorite would ring like a bell when struck,” Johnson remembered. “Often in the middle of the night the ‘bell’ would clang. Then out of bed jumped Father, grabbed his gun, and muttering to himself, rushed outside.” Young Harold ended up with his own small chunk of the meteorite, obtained, he insisted, from a thief his dad had caught in the act.
It was July before the Oregon Supreme Court heard Hughes’s appeal and upheld the circuit court’s verdict in favor of Oregon Iron and Steel. In his decision, Justice C. J. Wolverton acceptedthe testimonies that tribal people had used the stone and its “kettle-holes” for spiritual purposes but stated that “mere evidence of a tradition that Indians reverenced a meteorite” was not enough to prove that they had legally taken possession of it, not even by moving the stone or fashioning the basins where they washed.“What is there to show that the Indians dug it from the earth and erected it in place, except its posture, or that they carved out the holes in its crown, except that they are there? If the first peoples never moved or altered the rock, how could they abandon it?” Wolverton concluded that he would follow the precedent set by the case
The court found for the land owners and established a precedent that whatever falls from Mars, the moon, or any other distant sphere, whose occupants are not on visiting terms with the people on Earth, becomes a part of the hereditaments of the land on which it may fall. No syndicate from any of the planets having put in a claim for the meteorite, it is now recognized as the property of the owners of the land upon which it was found.
The court valued the meteorite at $150 and gave the company’s owners permission to repossess the stone. Although Ellis Hughes filed an appeal, his claim seemed to be on its final tack. “If the plaintiff (Oregon Iron and Steel) wins out in suit,” reported one paper,“the meteor will be added to the collections at the Portland Museum.”
Then in January 1905, a new lawsuit appeared to further muddy the waters. Two local officials claimed that the meteorite had been stolen not from Oregon Iron and Steel property but from a contiguous parcel they jointly owned, and they pointed to a crater there to prove it. For the court’s pleasure, they produced several witnesses who swore that the stone currently resting on Ellis Hughes’s property had definitely emerged from the officials’ land.
The jury, perhaps influenced by evidence that this second crater had been recently created with dynamite, again ruled for Oregon Iron and Steel. In addition, they re-valuedthe meteorite at a staggering $10,000. Suddenly, everyone from West Linn to the East Coast knew this stone represented something more than a curiosity. The judge placed the object under the protection of the Clackamas County sheriff pending the outcome of Hughes’s appeal, which was still waiting to be scheduled before the state supreme court.
By now it was spring, and people were flocking to nearby Portland for the centennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. As a show of good will, Ellis Hughes and Oregon Iron and Steel mutually agreed that the disputed stone could be carted to Oregon City and displayed on the courthouse square. Local boosters dared to hope that the many visitors drawn “to see the big meteorite will spend thousands of dollars here and the business men will reap the benefit.”
The tourist attraction had hardly begun its journey to the courthouse square, however, when a state judge ruled that it must stop immediately. Its progress was halted next to a farm belonging to the Johnson family. In later years Harold Johnson, then a young boy, recalled with pride how his father was deputized to guard the stone, and how over the next few months his sleep was often interrupted by souvenir hunters who would sneak onto the property, hammers in hand, and attempt to crack off pieces. “The meteorite would ring like a bell when struck,” Johnson remembered. “Often in the middle of the night the ‘bell’ would clang. Then out of bed jumped Father, grabbed his gun, and muttering to himself, rushed outside.” Young Harold ended up with his own small chunk of the meteorite, obtained, he insisted, from a thief his dad had caught in the act.
It was July before the Oregon Supreme Court heard Hughes’s appeal and upheld the circuit court’s verdict in favor of Oregon Iron and Steel. In his decision, Justice C. J. Wolverton acceptedthe testimonies that tribal people had used the stone and its “kettle-holes” for spiritual purposes but stated that “mere evidence of a tradition that Indians reverenced a meteorite” was not enough to prove that they had legally taken possession of it, not even by moving the stone or fashioning the basins where they washed.“What is there to show that the Indians dug it from the earth and erected it in place, except its posture, or that they carved out the holes in its crown, except that they are there? If the first peoples never moved or altered the rock, how could they abandon it?” Wolverton concluded that he would follow the precedent set by the case
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