Visiting the Second Largest Meteor Crater in the Country - The Odessa Meteor Crater

hey everyone welcome to Sidetrack Adventures this is Steve when you think of Texas oil country Stonehenge is probably not the first thing that comes to mind yet here we are in Odessa Texas standing in front of a replica of stonehinge but another thing that probably doesn't come to mind is a meteor crater but just outside of Odessa is apparently the second largest meteor crater in the United States and that's where we're heading today while the original Stonehenge dates back to around 2500 BC this one isn't quite as old it was built in 2004 this Odessa Stonehenge isn't an exact replica of the original but it's said to be pretty close this one is slightly shorter than the real one but it's supposed to be exact in horizontal size and astronomically accurate it as well and also unlike the real one you can walk around through the middle of this stonehinge it looks like people have placed rocks on this slab as maybe some sort of offering and there's a little plaque here in the middle let's see what it is it looks like it just shows the directions another thing that's different from the real Stone Henge is these slabs are left leftovers from a limestone Quarry the real Stonehenge stones are sarson this Stonehenge replica is pretty cool but it's time to go check out a meteor crater this replica of Stonehenge is located on the campus of the University of Texas peran Basin and where we're heading today is just a few miles outside of Odessa so it should be a pretty short drive and we've arrived we've previously done a video on the Behringer crater in Arizona which is massive this one should be considerably smaller then again the one in Arizona cost about $30 to visit last time we were there and this one is free despite it being free to visit it looks like we're the only ones here right now there are no other cars in the parking lot so that slightly lower bit of land behind us is the meteor crater and when seeing it the first thing that comes to mind is I thought everything was bigger in Texas but we're here so let's take a look at the meteor crater and we'll head down into it here is the Odessa meteor crater in all its Glory this is also a national natural Landmark let's check out the museum real quick before we head into the crater the museum is just this one [Music] room despite how small it is the museum does have quite a few meteorite [Music] samples but I've seen enough meteorites let's head down into the crater hopefully this crater isn't full of snakes like that room from Raiders of the Lost Arc we are in the middle of oil country there are oil wells all around the crater in fact the meteorite probably struck oil when it hit this rock here was 100 ft underground until it was pushed up by the impact about 63,000 years ago or so apparently thousands of iron meteorites hit this area forming a number of craters this being the biggest one originally the this crater was 100 ft deep but over time it's slowly filled in with dust being blown in by the wind it's now only 9 to 14 ft deep this place kind of reminds me of when I was a kid over at my grandparents house and me and my cousins found some shovels in the backyard and we decided to see how big of a hole we could dig and we got a pretty big hole going up until the time my grandfather came out and discovered what we were doing and put an end to it pretty quickly now I'm not saying our whole was Odessa meteor crater sized but you'd be surprised what four kids with shovels could do if left unsupervised for a bit and speaking of kids this crater was actually discovered by a kid it was discovered in 1892 by the 12-year-old son of a local Rancher named Julius Henderson who was out looking for a Lost calf originally the Depression was thought to be a blowout hole caused by gas trap below the surface so this is what the bottom of the crater looks like there's the Oil Well we saw earlier up above us and that finc off area up ahead should be where a shaft was dug in order to try to find the meteorite that did this this shaft is 165 ft deep and was dug using WPA labor in 1940 to 1941 under the supervision of the University of Texas no large meteorite has ever been found buried under the crater though the shaft is still here but in 1950s someone Set Fire to the wood structure of the shaft so it's no longer possible to climb down there there there's a dust devil things like that are what's filled this crater in over the last 63,000 years it's interesting when you know what created this depression but I have to say it doesn't look super impressive from here but let's get the Drone out and see how it looks from above from above the crater does definitely stand out from all of the flat land around it in the 1920s the son of Behringer who owned the meteor crater in Arizona along with Dr eh cards from the University of Texas recognized this as an impact crater originally this was thought to be related to the larger baringer crator in Arizona was some suggesting that the Odessa meteorite had broken away from the Behringer mete right before impact while that didn't turn out to be the case this did become the second officially designated meteorite crater on Earth I've read in several places that this is the second largest impact crater in the United States then the National Park Service says it's one of only two known meteor sites in the country which I guess would still make it the second largest but then other sources list a number of impact craters including larger ones in Texas so I guess whether this is the second largest impact crater in the United States or not depends on who you ask there are actually a few craters around here but most have been filled in over the Millennia right over here is crater number two because the meteorites that created this smaller crater were traveling slower they didn't vaporize and about 6 tons of meteorite have been found under this crater they dug this trench in front of us in 1939 looking for the meteorite they didn't find the meteorite but they did find a fossilized prehistoric elephant tooth no word on the rest of the elephant though [Music] so that's our look at the Odessa meteor crater maybe not as big as Arizona's meteor crater but it's free so anyways thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 202,052

Keywords: Odessa Meteor Crater, Texas travel, Odessa Texas, Meteor Crater, Odessa Stonehenge, meteor crater texas

Id: tUIqklAbUXs

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024