of the Iowa aerolite, granting possession to the landowner.
With this final judgment in hand, Ellis Hughes had to admit defeat. The Clackamas County sheriff released custody of the meteorite to Oregon Iron and Steel, and the company hired twelve men and two teams of draft horses to transport their prize. Working night and day, the crews nudged a heavy-laden sledge to the mouth of the Tualatin River and onto a scow. A steamer towed the barge throughthe Willamette Falls Locks and down the Willamette River to Portland, where it was unloaded, dragged to a railroad scale, and certified at a weight of 31,107 pounds.
On August 23, 1905, the Willamette Meteorite was unveiled inside the Mining Building at the great Lewis and Clark Exposition. No less a dignitary than the director of the US Geological Survey pulled the cord that swept away an American flag covering the celebrated stone. That ceremony was followed by learned discourses from a US senator and a representative of the Boston Institute of Technology. While the scientist compared the shape of the mass to a flattened Liberty Bell, one reporter was struck by its resemblance to acrawling turtle. Predictably, the day’s events led to fevered announcements concerning plans for a permanent display, with both Oregon City and Colonel Hawkins’s Portland museum contending for the prize.
But before a winner could be determined, a third bidder emerged. Just as civic-minded locals had feared, the interloper was from out of town. New York mining heiress and American Museum of Natural History patroness Mrs. William E. Dodge offered $20,600 for sole possession of the meteorite, with the stipulation that it be kept intact. Oregon Iron and Steel accepted without a murmur of hesitation, and as soon as the Lewis and Clark Exposition closed, the stone was loaded on a train bound for New York City. Transferred from flatcar to a sophisticated heavy-duty cart, the Willamette Meteorite was paraded past Central Park to the steps of the grand museum. There, as local dignitaries swarmed aboard for a photo opportunity, one wheel of the cart sank deep into the asphalt street.
Backwash
Upon its arrival in New York, the Willamette Meteorite received a flurry of scientific attention. In the October 1905 issue of the
American Geologist,
Horace V. Winchell, the Minnesota collector who had secured the Iowa aerolite, took exception to many of the conclusions Henry Ward had reached while wallowing in the Oregon mud, especially his notion that rainwater could have eroded the fantastic pattern on the missile’s trailing side. An expert from the American Museum of Natural History weighed in the following summer. There could be no doubt that the New York museum had cornered the market on spectacular aerolites, and that Mrs. Dodge’s purchase ranked very high as a public attraction because of itsaerodynamic cone, spectacularly corroded base, and dramatic backstory. Ellis Hughes’s imaginative heist remained part of the appeal. The author attempted to clarify anomalies present in the texture and internal structure of the prize, comparing it to others held in the museum’s meteorite collection.
In 1936, the pride of West Linn, along with 569 other specimens collected from around the globe, was moved to a grand display at the new Hayden Planetarium. There the Willamette Meteorite stood tall, second in size only to Robert Peary’s Cape York Ahnighito.
The great Hall of Meteorites generated a new wave of publicity for the Willamette find and, perhaps, a small ripple of guilt from Dr. Clyde Fisher, chief curator of the New York museum. In 1938, Fisher mailed a package to Professor J. H. Pruett of the University of Oregon, who served as the western director for the American Meteorological Society and had worked tirelessly to support the study of Oregon meteorites.“I have had a small piece cut from the Willamette meteorite for the University of Oregon,” Dr. Fisher wrote to Pruett. “We had the specimen
With this final judgment in hand, Ellis Hughes had to admit defeat. The Clackamas County sheriff released custody of the meteorite to Oregon Iron and Steel, and the company hired twelve men and two teams of draft horses to transport their prize. Working night and day, the crews nudged a heavy-laden sledge to the mouth of the Tualatin River and onto a scow. A steamer towed the barge throughthe Willamette Falls Locks and down the Willamette River to Portland, where it was unloaded, dragged to a railroad scale, and certified at a weight of 31,107 pounds.
On August 23, 1905, the Willamette Meteorite was unveiled inside the Mining Building at the great Lewis and Clark Exposition. No less a dignitary than the director of the US Geological Survey pulled the cord that swept away an American flag covering the celebrated stone. That ceremony was followed by learned discourses from a US senator and a representative of the Boston Institute of Technology. While the scientist compared the shape of the mass to a flattened Liberty Bell, one reporter was struck by its resemblance to acrawling turtle. Predictably, the day’s events led to fevered announcements concerning plans for a permanent display, with both Oregon City and Colonel Hawkins’s Portland museum contending for the prize.
But before a winner could be determined, a third bidder emerged. Just as civic-minded locals had feared, the interloper was from out of town. New York mining heiress and American Museum of Natural History patroness Mrs. William E. Dodge offered $20,600 for sole possession of the meteorite, with the stipulation that it be kept intact. Oregon Iron and Steel accepted without a murmur of hesitation, and as soon as the Lewis and Clark Exposition closed, the stone was loaded on a train bound for New York City. Transferred from flatcar to a sophisticated heavy-duty cart, the Willamette Meteorite was paraded past Central Park to the steps of the grand museum. There, as local dignitaries swarmed aboard for a photo opportunity, one wheel of the cart sank deep into the asphalt street.
Backwash
Upon its arrival in New York, the Willamette Meteorite received a flurry of scientific attention. In the October 1905 issue of the
American Geologist,
Horace V. Winchell, the Minnesota collector who had secured the Iowa aerolite, took exception to many of the conclusions Henry Ward had reached while wallowing in the Oregon mud, especially his notion that rainwater could have eroded the fantastic pattern on the missile’s trailing side. An expert from the American Museum of Natural History weighed in the following summer. There could be no doubt that the New York museum had cornered the market on spectacular aerolites, and that Mrs. Dodge’s purchase ranked very high as a public attraction because of itsaerodynamic cone, spectacularly corroded base, and dramatic backstory. Ellis Hughes’s imaginative heist remained part of the appeal. The author attempted to clarify anomalies present in the texture and internal structure of the prize, comparing it to others held in the museum’s meteorite collection.
In 1936, the pride of West Linn, along with 569 other specimens collected from around the globe, was moved to a grand display at the new Hayden Planetarium. There the Willamette Meteorite stood tall, second in size only to Robert Peary’s Cape York Ahnighito.
The great Hall of Meteorites generated a new wave of publicity for the Willamette find and, perhaps, a small ripple of guilt from Dr. Clyde Fisher, chief curator of the New York museum. In 1938, Fisher mailed a package to Professor J. H. Pruett of the University of Oregon, who served as the western director for the American Meteorological Society and had worked tirelessly to support the study of Oregon meteorites.“I have had a small piece cut from the Willamette meteorite for the University of Oregon,” Dr. Fisher wrote to Pruett. “We had the specimen
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