[meteorite-list] Re: Barringer Meteor $$$$

From: Steve Schoner <steve_schoner_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:25:37 2004
Message-ID: <20030509081956.43018.qmail_at_web12708.mail.yahoo.com>

Bob,

No need to apologize, I respect your opinion, and I
know that I can be stubborn on issues that I believe
to be true. And ost of what you say is true. The
Park Service is in dismal straits, and it seems our
illustrious government is inclined to keep it that
way. I worked for the NPS for ten years from 1988 to
1998, so I can relate to what you are saying.

But that does not take away the argument that the 1872
Mining Act needs to be repealed or amended so that
current mining claims can be re-examined. There has
been some movement over the years to do that, but
mining interests intervene each and every time it
comes up.

I still believe strongly that Meteor Crater should not
be leased under the provisions of the Mining Act. I
have always had this opinion.

I remember the days when I went there when it was a
tourist trap. It still is a tourist trap. They were
in the process of re-modeling the museum when I was
last there. And the tour guide had some great
historical stories relating to the crater, but his
understanding of the geology of the site was
deficient. He said that the meteor was under the
southern rim, and this, Dr. Shoemaker, and Dr. Moulton
proved wrong. And Nininger found the sphereoids to
prove it... that the meteorite was vaporized on
impact. There is no massive meteorite under the
southern rim of the crater.
 
With regards to interpretation of meteorites, one
thing has bothered me for years, and this is just one
of many things that bothered me. You might want to
see if they still have a slice of the Richardton
Meteorite that fell in 1918 confused with a slice of
weathered Morland Meteorite in their meteorite display
case. I have told the manager about this display
several times over several years and even e-mailed the
manager about it. Still, the last time I saw it, it
was labeled wrong, with the labels on the wrong
meteorites.

Guess in the manager's estimation, I don't know what I
am talking about.

All of this aside, I strongly disagree with you
regarding Dr. Nininger's collection of Canyon Diablo
meteorites. In the days that he was there he searched
for meteorites IN BROAD DAYLIGHT for the reason that
the Arizona State Land Department, and maybe even
Meteor Crater managers permitted him to do so. And
they had not denied him permission to take what he
found on state lands outside of the crater property.
What "poacher" would steal in broad daylight right
under the noses of State land, and private managers?
And in 1939 he even used a truck with huge
electromagnets mounted on the back to rake the
northern rim soils for smaller meteorites IN BROAD
DAYLIGHT. And the Barringer’s and crater managers knew
that he was there after permission to do so was
granted.

They knew for years that Dr. Nininger was there
collecting meteorites, and with permission to do so he
continued his research at the museum now ruined near
the current I-40, selling those meteorites to an
interested public. During that time he continued to
make contributions in the field meteor crater science.

So, now long after he is gone, the current managers
say that he ACTUALLY STOLE the meteorites?

Dr. Nininger never told me that he stole meteorites
from Meteor Crater, or from the State lands
surrounding the crater. They were, according to what
he related to me, obtained with permits and legally.

Certainly un-like the current "poachers" that scamper
around the crater AT NIGHT?

Humm...

I would rather believe the story of a man that spent
years searching in daylight, than the stories of those
who never met him and know nothing of the situation as
it actually happened..

As for my project… Yes, I am somewhat bitter about it.
 I asked Nininger how I would start to go about it. He
related to me that first I would have to contact the
AZ Bureau of Land Management for a permit to search on
State lands. That is what he did over the years that
he searched the crater. But then he said, I hope that
you have luck at it, for there is some kind of special
arrangement between the folks at Meteor Crater and
BLM.

He was right.

What a tremendous waste of time and effort, spanning
years of my life when I was much healthier and younger
to do the work. You have no idea the things I had to
agree to even start the project. And yes I am a
"dealer" of meteorites. (All dealers to the MCE are
"poachers" by the way) Try to get over that bias in
their eyes. Even if you bend over backwards to meet
their conditions to be honest, in their viewpoint a
meteorite dealer is still a thief. I have much more
to say on this, but it is much too involved to post
here.

And the totality of this issue is really more
complicated than just the Mining Act of 1872, as it
pertains to Meteor Crater proper. It is also the fact
that Arizona State lands are being leased to them
(Meteor Crater Enterprises and Bar-T-Bar Ranch) for
cattle grazing. The mineral rights are not specified,
and at least the last time I checked there was no
provision in the law that all mineral rights go under
that claim. It certainly was not that way when Dr.
Nininger was searching State lands around the crater.
All one had to do was put in an application and fee
for a prospector’s permit to search State lands even
if they were being grazed under a grazing permit. But
currently, in the case of Meteor Crater, these permits
are not granted, unless one meets impossible
conditions put down by the entities or persons leasing
the lands for grazing.

Fifteen years ago, I was trying to get my projct
going, meeting all of the demands for inspections and
security measures to ensure that I did not “poach” any
meteorites; every piece I found would go to UCLA, and
or ASU. During this time I spoke to a land manager in
Phoenix, I believe it was Hal Suzie. I mentioned that
what would happen if one found meteorites in places
throughout Arizona other than meteor crater, and they
did not have the required “meteorite permit.” His
response was immediate and abrupt. “All meteorite
finds made on Arizona BLM lands are the property of
the State of Arizona, and must be turned over.”

Holbrook, or Gold Basin finds on BLM land on AZBLM
lands?

Better have your permits… ;->

In all of what I experienced, Arizona is a complicated
state with strange land policy…

No doubt about that.

It remains a mystery to me. And I have lived here for
33 years.

And with a change of focus, I kept my sights on a much
coveted meteorite prize at Glorieta Mt; MM, and turned
all the effort that I would have otherwise spent at
the Arizona's Meteor Crater with no gain at all, to
achieving something worth while.

Steve Schoner.
http://www.geocities.com/meteorite_identification

P. S.

This was extremely hard, and it took a long time for
me to bring these details up into my mind and then
into words as I am, even after four months of recovery
from encephalitis still somewhat out of it.


--- Bob Martino <martino.6_at_osu.edu> wrote:
> All,
>
> With apologies to the eloquent Mr. Schoner, I must
> present a dissenting (or
> at least balancing) opinion.
>
> With regard to the Mining Act under which the
> Barringer family obtained the
> crater, it was in fact legal and in fact proper. The
> mining act only says
> that you must _try_ to extract minerals from the
> land for a specific time
> period. After that, the land becomes yours. Daniel
> Barringer did, by God,
> try his damndest to extract minerals. He actually
> sunk most of his fortune
> into it, eventually going broke. But it was mined
> for the proper amount of
> time under the law and so became his. You might make
> the case that the law
> is bad and allows public property to pass into
> private hands without just
> compensation to the government (and I might agree
> with you). Even so, it is
> the law of the land and the letter as well as spirit
> of that law was met by
> Mr. Barringer. As a point of fact, almost anyone
> living out west does so on
> land that used to be owned by the government but was
> essentially _given_
> away to the first settlers and homesteaders.
>
> I think that (at this time at least) making the
> crater a National Park or
> National Monument would be a mistake.
>
> I've visited the crater twice now and each time I've
> been impressed with the
> great job the company is doing running the whole
> operation. On my first
> visit I expected a typical tourist trap. Stupid
> plastic "Indian tomahawks"
> and other inane items in the gift shop, for example.
> While there is a little
> of this, most of what they sell is good,
> interesting, and even educational.
> If you tell them you're a teacher they even will
> mail to you a package of
> information, books, and pictures. What tourist trap
> does that? Also, the
> tours were not lame and cheezy affairs given by a
> bored guide with a poor
> attitude and worse diction. Both times my guide for
> the rim walk was quite
> knowledgeable and interesting. At the end of my
> first tour I told the guide
> I worked at an observatory. He took out of his
> pocket the magnet that he'd
> drug through an ant hill during the tour. He picked
> off a few dozen
> authentic ant-mined meteorite specimens and gave
> them to me in a plastic
> wrapper from a cigarette pack. That was so cool.
> They also have a short
> movie about the crater which plays every 20 minutes
> or so and it's very well
> done also. High production values do not come cheap.
> On my second visit I
> found that they'd re-done the entire exhibit hall
> with cool interactive
> displays and hands-on activities. This sort of very
> professional exhibit
> development also does not come cheap either. Trust
> me. I've done a lot of
> exhibit creation on a tiny budget and I know how
> that looks.
>
> For more than a decade the budget for the National
> Park Service has been cut
> every year while the number of parks and monuments
> has grown. Add in
> inflation and you quickly see why the NPS has a
> backlog of almost a quarter
> of a billion dollars in desperately needed repairs
> and infrastructure
> improvements that simply cannot be paid for. If the
> NPS took over Meteor
> Crater then in a few years the beautiful building
> would begin to fall apart
> and even more poaching would occur due to lack of
> staffing.
>
> Indeed, the Barringer family _tried_ to return the
> land to the government!
> When the Federal Government said, "No thanks" they
> tried to give it to the
> State of Arizona. Arizona also declined. Everyone
> saw it as a worthless
> white-elephant-like piece of God-forsaken desert.
> Now that Meteor Crater
> Enterprises has made it into something worth having,
> we want to take it away
> from them?
>
> So you say the admission fee is too high? Why? To me
> it seems in line with
> other tourist attractions around the country. So
> what if you can enter Grand
> Canyon for $20 a car load? You don't actually
> believe that the park can
> cover _all_ of its costs at that admission price, do
> you? Meteor Crater
> doesn't receive any public money like the parks do.
> It's for-profit. Grand
> Canyon is non-profit. There are different economics
> at play here. Meteor
> Crater cannot run on deficit spending. And it isn't
> wrong for them to want
> to make a profit. Let me say that again. It is not
> wrong for a private
> for-profit company to make a profit from the use of
> its assets. That's
> Capitalism at work, isn't it?
>
> OK, so MCE doesn't like the late Dr. Nininger.
> Actually, they have good
> reason. He did indeed take meteorites off their
> private property and sell
> them. That's stealing. Whatever else the Dr. did,
> whatever good he did,
> whatever research he accomplished, he did steal
> meteorites from the
> Barringer family. Answer me this everyone: If you
> owned a large piece of
> land that had meteorites on it, what would you do
> about people sneaking in
> and taking them? Don't call it "poaching" (in
> quotation marks as if to say
> "It's not really poaching"). Call it stealing.
> That's what it is. I know
> that if God dropped a bunch of meteorite fragments
> on land that I owned, I'd
> guard them carefully and God help whoever tried to
> take them! Now imagine
> that you opened a tourist attraction on your
> meteorite-covered property
> (let's say an impact left a crater). Someone then
> comes by and places a
> competing attraction RIGHT NEXT DOOR where people
> could look onto your land
> and see your crater and then go into the gift shop
> and buy meteorites stolen
> from you. How would you feel? What would you do?
>
> Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bash Dr.
> Nininger. He was a great man
> who accomplished a lot of good science throughout a
> hard life filled with
> adversity. I'm just saying that the attitudes of the
> managers of the crater
> have good reasons behind them.
>
> Given the above, the attitude of Meteor Crater
> Enterprises toward hard
> research into the strewn field seems easier to
> understand. The American
> Meteorite Survey sells meteorites too. Having a
> meteorite dealer search
> around the crater collecting what he finds... I'm
> not sure that I'd allow it
> if I were in charge. The fact that Steve was a
> friend of Dr. Nininger just
> makes it worse.
>
> By the way, Steve, I have to call you on an
> inconsistency. You criticized
> MCE for allowing poachers to steal meteorites and
> sell them at rock shops
> along the highway while destroying strewn-field
> data. But you also
> criticized them for their attempts to stop the
> poaching. I'm afraid you
> can't have it both ways.
>
> And there is another entirely different reason why
> the MCE people might not
> like Steve's research. Lawsuits. What if Steve or
> one of his assistants got
> hurt? Meteor Crater was sued some time ago because a
> _stupid_ woman wearing
> sandals tried to hike around the crater rim even
> though she was warned not
> to. Of course she got hurt. Of course, it was the
> fault of MCE for not
> physically stopping her from doing something stupid.
> MCE's insurance company
> was going to refuse them any more coverage unless
> they prevented _everyone_
> from going outside while at the rim. Without
> insurance coverage MCE wouldn't
> be able to legally operate at all. MCE was finally
> able
=== message truncated ===


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Received on Fri 09 May 2003 04:19:56 AM PDT