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Norton County

Norton County - A Flashback, or Monahans Relived  :-)

Ursula B. Marvin
Invited Review
The Meteoritical Society: 1933 to 1993
Meteoritics 28-3, 1993, July, pp. 261-314

The Norton County - Furnas County Meteorite Fall, Feb 18, 1948 (abs. in
Meteoritics 28-3, 1993, 271-273):


The Norton County-Furnas County Meteorite Fall, February 18, 1948

A spectacular fireball accompanied by violent explosions streaked
northward over Kansas at 5:00 p.m. on February 18, 1948. One hour later,
LaPaz was informed of the event by the Civil Air Patrol, who thought at
first that a plane had crashed. LaPaz followed up sightings through
Civil Air Patrol channels, concluded that a meteorite had fallen, and
within two weeks, calculated a probable shower ellipse near the
Kansas-Nebraska line.
Meanwhile, the Niningers heard the news, went to the scene, and talked
with many people, but a mid-winter blizzard forced them to leave before
completing a search for meteorites. A farmer living in Norton County,
Kansas, found the first stone late in the following spring, and after
that many more were found in the same general area. In August, a farmer
working his fields in Furnas County, Nebraska, a few miles north of the
Kansas-Nebraska line, felt his tractor tilt steeply and found it perched
at the edge of a hole 10 ft. deep with a huge stone at the bottom. The
stone proved to be a magnificent flight-oriented cone weighing nearly
one ton. This piece holds the record as the largest stony meteorite
specimen in North America.
Nininger asserted later that he had alerted the farmer to look for large
stones on his property, and so the farmer had called him to report his
discovery. Nininger traveled to the farm as soon as possible and climbed
down into the hole to collect small chips that lay on the bottom and to
prepare to collect the huge stone. But this stone lay within the
strewnfield predicted by LaPaz who felt that his map together with his
own lines of communication constituted a valid claim. Presently,
Nininger heard voices and looked up to see LaPaz and Leonard peering
over the edge of the hole. LaPaz' party of five soon was joined by a
party of four from the Nebraska State and University Museums. LaPaz
claimed prior rights to the stone, based on his calculations of the find
site and the notice that had been sent to him. Nininger claimed finders'
rights as well as what amounted to squatters' rights. As neither man
would yield, permission was obtained from the absentee landlord to hold
an auction in the farmhouse at night. Together, the Institute of
Meteoritics and the University of Nebraska outbid Nininger, who left the
scene. The stone was securely wrapped in burlap, coated with plaster of
Paris, and lifted out of the hole by a crane. It then was loaded on a
truck for a slow 550-mile drive to the Institute of Meteoritics in
Albuquerque.
The following September, when the Society met at the Institute of
Meteoritics, Leonard (1948a) gave a detailed account of the Norton
County shower including the discovery and collection of the Furnas
stone. He pointed out that this was the first strewnfield to cross a
state line and that therefore the meteorite must bear the compound name
"Norton County, Kansas-Furnas County, Nebraska meteorite." Needless to
say, few curators or catalogers were persuaded of such a necessity and
so the meteorite quickly became known as "Norton County." Leonard did
not mention Nininger in his report. Nininger presented his own account
and protested Leonard's failure to mention his presence at the site.
Letters in the Society Archives show that a month later, on October 25,
1948, Nininger wrote to LaPaz referring to the newly issued Catalogue of
the Institute of Meteoritics and requesting specimens of Norton County
which displayed a range of types and conditions of the fusion crust to
use in his studies of meteorite surface features. In reply, LaPaz sent
him a copy of the Institute's "Preliminary Application Form for Loan
and/or Donation of Meteoritical Materials." It stated that one of the
purposes of the Institute was to:

... make avaliable, without cost, to nuclear physicists, ballisticians,
aerodynamisticians, and other investigators... specimens they might
require for experimental purposes thus enabling scientists to escape
from a state of affairs which has led two prominent mineralogists to
complain that:
'Meteorites are held at such an artificially high value by dealers and
collectors as to make it difficult to secure any large quantity of any
fall.'

Thus, in order to obtain specimens, a petitioner would be asked to sign
"No" to the following questions:

1. Has an admission fee ever been charged, or is such a fee now charged,
or is it contemplated to charge such a fee of the general public for
admittance to any meteoritical exhibits housed in or in the possession
of the institution of which you are a representative?

2. Does the institution you represent or do you or your assistants now
engage in the sale of jewelry made from meteorites (by some described as
"otherworld jewelry) or of other objects d'art such as book ends, bases
for fountain pen sets ... from meteoritical materials... or is the sale
of such objects contemplated in the future?

We need not ask whether or not Nininger received his requested specimens
of Norton County from the Institute of Meteoritics.
LaPaz evidently felt deeply that meteorities should be raised from the
realm of dealers, hobbyists, and amateur collectors and established as
an academic discipline to be pursued in universities, preferably by
professors like himself who held Ph.D. degrees in mathematics, physics,
or astronomy. Not only did he deplore Nininger's selling of meteorites
at his museum, he was scandalized when Nininger brought specimens to
Society meetings and offered them for sale. In all probability, LaPaz
saw dealers as posing a genuine threat to research opportunities by
inflating the prices of meteorites. He may also have felt a whiff of the
disdain toward "men-in-trade" that was traditional among gentlemanly
scholars on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.


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