Another leg done. Today’s walk took me to the the Desert Discovery Center. This is an education center in Barstow, California mainly having to do with desert life, which isn’t really our remit. But they have on display something that is: the Old Woman Meteorite.
It presumably is called that because it was discovered in the Old Woman Mountains, which presumably are called that because they include the Old Woman Statue, a rock formation which presumably is called that because it resembles an old woman. It — the meteorite, in case you’ve lost track — is mostly iron and was discovered in 1976. If there are any clues to when it fell I don’t know about them. At 2750 kg originally, it’s the largest meteorite found in California and the second largest found in the United States. The largest was the Willamette, remember? It’s had a few hundred kg sliced off for study, and an 80.5 kg piece was back at the UCLA meteorite gallery; the rest is here.
Dr. Roy S. Clarke, Jr. curator of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History meteorite collection, stands behind the Old Woman Meteorite
On I go, turning back toward the south.
A map showing my progress is here, a spreadsheet with progress detail is here, and a Google Earth KMZ file is in this Google Drive folder. Present coordinates: 34.809°N, 117.025°W.
| previous: | Earthwalk Day 1233 (8 June 2025), 12,269 km: Two spaceports |
| next: | Earthwalk Day 1250 (25 June 2025), 12,460 km: Big Bear Solar Observatory |