Mark Small posted on September 16, 2009 20:14
The unveiling is going to be at
Thursday, September 17, 2009, 11:00am
US 25E (at Aarons)
Middlesborough, KY
Presented By Bell County Tourism Commissionand Bell County Historical Society
Official Ribbon Cutting Ceremony ...................... Mayor Ben Hickman and Bell County Chamber of Commerce
Welcome ................................................................. Judy Barton, President & CEO Bell County Tourism Commission
Comments ............................................................. Jeff Crowe, CEO, TOURSEKY
Crater Marker Unveiling Ceremony ................... Tom & Barbara Shattuck, Bell County Historical Society
Comments ............................................................. Drew Andrews, President, Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists
Closing Remarks ................................................. Judy
GROUND ZERO: Middlesboro Meteor Crater
When it happened, it was a big deal, to be sure. The imagination runs wild at just how the event may have unfolded around 300 million years ago in the moments prior to impact. Perhaps the fading sun was setting on the mountains, marking the perfect end of a perfect day. Without warning, the sky above turned from dusky twilight to blinding brilliance as a chunk of cosmic debris 1500 feet across hurtled into the atmosphere at over 11 miles per second (40,000 mph), impacting the earth, and instantaneously vaporizing itself and much of ground zero.
The effects of the Middlesboro impact were regionally devastating; all life and vegetation were likely destroyed within a 50-100 mile radius. Nevertheless, it was a small event as meteor impacts go; certainly nothing like the meteorite that is blamed for having brought about the hotly debated extinction of the dinosaurs around 67 million years ago. The suspect, dino-killing meteorite is believed to have struck the earth in the Yucatan Peninsula of Central America. For the sake of comparison, consider that while the Middlesboro crater is about 3.7 miles in diameter, the Chicxulub crater of the Yucatan Peninsula features fault rings that are at least 77.7 miles across. Now that is a world-class impact with after-effects on a global scale. While the Middlesboro structure is small by comparison, it today has the distinction of being one of the most circular craters in North America.
Today, the crater can be difficult to recognize for the untrained observer. This circumstance results from the fact that the mountains rimming the Middlesboro Basin are not the eroded remnants of the crater, but are rather the remains of the fractured layers of rock beneath it. To conceive of this, it must be understood that the topography observed today in the Basin has resulted from streams that have been cutting down through the bedrock for millions of years from positions that would have been above today’s highest local peaks. The original crater walls, therefore, would have been at a level above the present mountaintops and may have reached upward an additional 1000-2000 feet. Beneath it all laid the Middlesboro Basin of the future with current topographic relief of 1,922 feet from current stream level to the highest bedrock on the surrounding mountains.
There are probably at least 1000 asteroids larger than a half-mile in diameter that crosses the orbit of earth. These strike the earth with alarming regularity and we can expect one to do so about every 300,000 years on average. Larger ones are less numerous and impacts by them are less frequent, but they do sometimes happen and with disastrous consequences.
It’s fascinating to ponder how a chance astronomical occurrence has affected the course of human history. This visitor from space gouged out a flat spot in an otherwise forbidding mountain terrain that is now home to 11,000 people. And, as it turns out, Middlesboro is officially recognized as the only US town built within a meteor crater.
Dean Henson, Naturalist
Pine Mountain State Resort Park