This is a fascinating and much-visited site that is located forty miles from Flagstaff in Arizona. It is said to have been created by a crashing meteor tens of thousands of years ago and is an amazing six hundred feet in depth. In addition it stretches one mile across, making it a fascinating site. You can go the crater's edge and enjoy viewing from the lookout points.

50,000 years ago, give or take, a meteorite came screaming from the sky and slammed into the Earth. The scar it left across the Arizona landscape is now a popular tourist attraction, complete with wreckage from daredevil pilots that flew too low.While it’s known simply as “Meteor Crater” to most, scientists refer to it as “Barringer Crater” after Daniel Barringer, the man who first suggested that the giant hole was made by a flying space rock. Barringer was a mining engineer, and his business, Standard Iron Company, staked claim on the property. In 1903, along with his partner, mathematician and physicist Benjamin Chew Tilghman, Barringer conducted land surveys and collected documentation supporting his meteor theory. Despite his efforts, he was met with skepticism and disbelief from the scientific community.Planetary science didn’t mature enough for geologists to swallow Barringer’s impact theory until the ’50s and ’60s. A discovery of the minerals coesite and stishovite, which only occur when quartz-bearing rocks are severely shocked by an instantaneous overpressure, supported all of Barringer’s findings. Unfortunately, Barringer had left this mortal plane in 1929 and was never vindicated in life. Eugene M. Shoemaker, who discovered the minerals, was given credit as the man who uncovered the first unarguable proof of extraterrestrial impact. Those visiting the Meteor Crater should keep their eyes out for the plane wreckage said to still be visible after an ill-fated attempt in 1964 to buzz the crater’s rim, ending in a fiery crash that seriously injured a pair of commercial pilots. Both men survived, and the wreckage of the Cessna 150 was left in the crater, perhaps as a cautionary visual aid to other daredevils that found the geological oddity hard to resist.

Meteor Crater was blasted out of the surrounding sandstone about 50,000 years ago, and the dry Arizona climate has kept it close to impact-fresh ever since. That stroke of good fortune, however, was wasted on America’s geologists, who for years insisted that the Crater was just another dead volcano. Daniel Barringer, a mining engineer from Philadelphia, believed otherwise. He bought the Crater in 1903, convinced that it was made by a huge meteorite. He also believed that if he could find that meteorite buried somewhere beneath the crater floor, he’d be rich. Daniel was right about the Crater, wrong about the meteorite. He drilled a 426 meters deep shaft, found nothing, and died in 1929 when he ran out of money. Source: roadsideamerica

You can walk right up to the rim of Meteor Crater & Barringer Space Museum, thought to be one of the best-preserved meteorite craters on the planet. The crater is privately owned by the Barringer family, the descendants of the scientist who was first to suggest that the crater was due to a meteor. The visitor center displays pieces of the meteorite recovered from the floor of the crater and tells the history surrounding the site. Learn about Daniel Barringer and the journey that led to the crater's discovery, then trek the paved walkway to its viewing point. Bring sunscreen; there is no natural shade along the walkway. Plan a trip to Winslow easily and quickly by telling Inspirock to suggest an itinerary.

Meteor Crater is a meteorite impact crater approximately 43 miles east of Flagstaff, near Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States. Because the US Department of the Interior Division of Names commonly recognizes names of natural features derived from the nearest post office, the feature acquired the name of "Meteor Crater" from the nearby post office named Meteor. The site was formerly known as the Canyon Diablo Crater, and fragments of the meteorite are officially called the Canyon Diablo Meteorite. Scientists refer to the crater as Barringer Crater in honor of Daniel Barringer, who was first to suggest that it was produced by meteorite impact. The crater is privately owned by the Barringer family through their Barringer Crater Company, which proclaims it to be "the most well known, best preserved meteorite crater on Earth". Despite its importance as a geological site, the crater is not protected as a national monument, a status that would require federal ownership. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in November 1967. Meteor Crater lies at an elevation of about 1,740 m above sea level. It is about 1,200 m in diameter, some 170 m deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 45 m above the surrounding plains. The center of the crater is filled with 210–240 m of rubble lying above crater bedrock. One of the interesting features of the crater is its squared-off outline, believed to be caused by pre-existing regional jointing in the strata at the impact site. Geology: The impact created an inverted stratigraphy, so that the layers immediately exterior to the rim are stacked in the reverse order to which they normally occur; the impact overturned and inverted the layers to a distance of one to two kilometers outward from the crater's edge. Specifically, climbing the rim of the crater from outside, one finds: Coconino Sandstone nearest the top of the rim Toroweap Formation Kaibab Formation Moenkopi Formation nearest the outer foot of the rim Meteor Crater today: Meteor Crater is today a popular tourist attraction privately owned by the Barringer family, with an admission fee charged to see the crater. The Meteor Crater Visitor Center on the North Rim features interactive exhibits and displays about meteorites and asteroids, space, the solar system and comets. It features the American Astronaut Wall of Fame, and such artifacts on display as an Apollo boilerplate command module, a 1,406 pound meteorite found in the area, and meteorite specimens from Meteor Crater that can be touched. Formerly known as the Museum of Astrogeology, the Visitor Center includes a movie theater, a gift shop, and observation areas with views inside the rim of the crater. Guided tours of the rim are offered daily.

Meteor Crater is a meteorite impact crater approximately 37 miles east of Flagstaff and 18 miles west of Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States. Because the United States Board on Geographic Names commonly recognizes names of natural features derived from the nearest post office, the feature acquired the name of "Meteor Crater" from the nearby post office named Meteor. The site was formerly known as the Canyon Diablo Crater and fragments of the meteorite are officially called the Canyon Diablo Meteorite.