Meteor Crater

About fifty thousand years ago, when the mammoths and giant ground sloths still roamed this region, a lump of iron and nickel tens of meters across came screaming out of the sky and struck the plateau at enormous speed. The energy released in that instant was staggering, vaporizing much of the meteorite and blasting a vast bowl out of solid rock, flinging debris for miles and heaving the surrounding layers of stone upward into a raised rim.

The impact would have been catastrophic for anything nearby, a blast far beyond any explosion humans have ever made. The dry desert climate and the crater's age have preserved it beautifully, so that what you see today is very close to what the impact left behind, a fresh-looking wound in the earth that has barely healed across all those thousands of years.

For years after settlers noticed the crater, its origin was disputed. Many geologists assumed it was the remains of a volcano, since impact craters were poorly understood at the time. In the early twentieth century a mining engineer named Daniel Barringer became convinced a meteorite had made it and even sank shafts hoping to find a huge buried mass of iron ore to mine, though most of the meteorite had actually vaporized on impact.

The crater still carries his name, the Barringer Crater, and though his mining dream failed, his conviction helped push the science forward. Decades later the geologist Eugene Shoemaker studied the site closely and found the telltale minerals that only form under the shock of a violent impact, settling the question for good. Meteor Crater became a proving ground for the whole field of impact science, showing the world what a fresh meteorite crater really looks like.

Because it is such a clear and accessible example of an impact crater, Meteor Crater became a classroom for the space age. In the years before the moon landings, Apollo astronauts came here to train, walking the rim and the crater country to learn how to recognize impact features, collect rock samples, and understand the kind of cratered terrain they would find on the lunar surface.

That connection gives the crater a special place in the story of exploration. The same forces that carved this bowl have shaped the moon and the other worlds of the solar system, pockmarked by countless impacts over billions of years. Standing on the rim, it is easy to feel the link between this quiet stretch of Arizona desert and the pitted faces of distant planets and moons.

The crater is a privately owned attraction, with a visitor center perched on the rim and viewpoints that let you look out over the enormous bowl. From the overlooks the scale slowly sinks in: the far wall is nearly a mile away, and the crater is deep enough to swallow tall buildings, yet the whole thing was made in a single moment. Exhibits and films inside tell the science and history, and guided rim walks add context.

The setting is pure high desert, wide open and exposed, so wind and sun can be strong on the rim. It makes an easy and memorable stop off the interstate, especially paired with the nearby wonders of the plateau, and it leaves most visitors with a new sense of just how dramatically the sky can reach down and reshape the ground.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.