The Willamette Meteorite
Fell in the last Ice Age; found in 1902
On the lower level of the Rose Center, beneath the great planetarium sphere, a dark shape that looks like a giant sculpted helmet sits on a plinth. It is the Willamette Meteorite, the largest ever found in the United States, and it is unlike any other meteorite on display. Its upper surface is hollowed into deep bowls and channels, some big enough to hold a child, giving it the look of a piece of coral or a melted bell. It weighs more than fifteen tonnes, and almost all of that is iron and nickel.
The cavities were not carved by its fall. The meteorite landed somewhere in Canada or Montana thousands of years ago and was carried to Oregon by the enormous Missoula floods at the end of the last Ice Age, riding on a raft of ice. It then lay for millennia in the wet forests of the Willamette Valley, where rainwater reacting with a mineral in the iron produced sulphuric acid that slowly dissolved the softer parts of the metal. Look at how the pits align: they follow the flow of water across a surface that has been in the same orientation for a very long time.
To the Clackamas people of Oregon the meteorite was Tomanowos, a sacred being that had come from the sky and gathered water in its hollows to bless hunters and heal the sick. In 1902 a settler named Ellis Hughes found it on land belonging to a steel company and spent three months dragging it to his own property in secret. The company sued and won, and the meteorite was sold and given to the museum in 1906. A formal agreement in 2000 allows the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde to hold an annual ceremony with it.
Did You Know? In 2000 the museum and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde agreed that the meteorite would return to Oregon only if it were ever removed from display.
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