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Met Name

Met Type

Thin Sections

20.6 grams.   Iron, IIIAB

TKW 15.5 tons. Fall not observed. Found 1902 in Oregon, USA.


   

Steve writes:

A type IIIAB iron, Willamette's recrystallized structure is thought to be a consequence either of having passed too close to the sun, or as the result of a significant impact-heating event on the parent body. Interestingly, pieces from one end of the meteorite exhibit the "galvanized" pattern seen in today's slice, but a small piece supposedly taken from the other end of the meteorite and on display years ago in the Clackamas County Historical Museum was more consistent with typical medium octahedrites. Measuring 10 feet by 6½ feet by 4¼ feet, Willamette is Oregon's second (of currently six) known meteorites, North America's largest meteorite, and the sixth largest meteorite in the world. Its unusual carved features formed while on the Earth's surface and have been made famous by the iconic picture of twin children fully reclined inside the larger cavities.

Photo 1 shows a 20.6 gram slice in an 8¼ x 6¼ inch Riker mount I made to protect and display it. Photo 2 shows the dimension of this slice (the ruler is in cm), and because the crystalline structures in irons are so hard to capture in a single picture, Photo 3 provides an animated gif with eight images taken at different lighting angles to better show the way Willamette's "galvanized" pattern changes in appearance depending on how it's viewed.

In his prior Willamette MPOD submission, Shawn provided an excerpt from Wikipedia describing this meteorite. Below is some additional information I was able to find, as well as a bit of elaboration on a few points in the Wikipedia entry.

Native Americans had long known of Willamette, believing it was delivered from the Moon to Clackamas as a representative of the Sky People to create a union between the sky, earth, and water when it rested in the ground and collected rain in its many crevices. Pooled rainwater was thought to purify, cleanse, and heal the Clackamas Indians and their neighbors, and tribal hunters dipped their arrowheads in the rainwater to bless their upcoming hunts. Today, scientists believe Willamette likely landed on a great ice dam in what is now Canada or Montana; when the dam breached at the end of the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, it created the Missoula Floods and transported the meteorite on an iceberg for hundreds of miles through Idaho's Pend d'Oreille region and on to its final resting spot in the Willamette Valley.

Willamette was "officially" discovered by settler Ellis Hughes in 1902 on property owned by the Oregon Iron and Steel Company near the city of West Linn. Recognizing its significance and wanting to claim ownership, Hughes secretly loaded the meteorite onto a wagon and spent the next three months using a horse, cables, and a capstan to move the almost 16 ton meteorite across the three-quarters of a mile to his property. In October of 1903, the Portland Oregonian wrote of Hughes' discovery, drawing curious crowds to Hughes' property that paid a twenty-five cent fee to view the meteorite. One of the visitors was an attorney from Oregon Iron and Steel who noticed ruts leading from the meteorite to his employer's property. A lawsuit was subsequently brought to the Oregon Supreme Court who ruled that Oregon Iron and Steel Company was the legal owner. Two years later while on display at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, it was purchased by Mrs. William E. Dodge for $26,000 (over $650,000 in today's dollars) and subsequently donated to New York City's American Museum of Natural History where it has been touched by an estimated 50 million people during its 105 year stay.

Hughes' initial attempt to steal the meteorite was not the only contentious aspect of Willamette's history. Oregon's Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community still revered the meteorite and wanted to use it in their ancestors' sacred ceremonies. In 1999 they filed a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act action against the American Museum of Natural History, demanding the return of their Tomanowos (meaning "heavenly visitor"). In 2000 the museum responded with a federal lawsuit against the Grand Ronde seeking a declaratory judgment in its favor. But later that year before the case was actually heard, both parties reached an agreement that the museum would keep the meteorite on display but never again cut it (a 28 pound crown section had been removed in 1997 and traded to the Macovich collection in exchange for 14 grams of a Martian meteorite); in return, ownership was transferred back to the Grand Ronde and tribal members were granted annual visits to conduct private rituals with Willamette.

Yet controversy surrounding Willamette didn't stop there. In 2007, Oregon's Congressional representative John Lim introduced a resolution demanding its return to Oregon (this was the second time congressional action was solicited - in 1991, 38,000 student signatures in Washington and Oregon resulted in five students giving testimony that resulted in Oregon senator Bob Packwood submitting an unsuccessful bill also demanding its return). Not having been consulted regarding this resolution, the tribes went on record expressing their preference for the current arrangement with the museum, and as a result no action was taken. But later in that same year a Bonham's auction was planned for the Macovich Collection's 28 pound piece of Willamette. Claims of insensitivity by the Grand Ronde and an editorial in Portland's Oregonian newspaper that asserted the tribes would take legal against the new owner caused the piece to be withdrawn from auction despite a subsequent retraction and apology by the newspaper after the Grand Ronde had disavowed the article as not representing their views (and as a consequence of the failed auction attempt, collection curator Daryl Pitt filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in the Oregon District Court against the newspaper).

Today, visitors can still view and touch the massive meteorite in New York in the American Museum of Natural History's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Hall of the Universe. But actual material for sale is generally scarce and commands high prices when available.