Google Earth Community: Meteorites Impact Database (+26.000 hits) On Earth

I discovered a placemark on Google Earth for the Willamette Meteorite when 'flying over' my house. The location given is actually several miles off from where it was found. Earlier experts could afford to be approximate in their coordinates, but GE now exposes their sloppiness.

Actual Coordinates are about 45 21.42 and 122 40.36. Your given coordinates are 45 22 N and 122 35 W. I drove by the location you have, which is now a front yard in a government low-cost housing project, and measured the by-road distance - 6.5 miles to the actual site. Less of course as the bird flies.

From your placemark for the Willamette Meteorite, with 'Roads' selected, follow Highway 205 from your bookmark location irregularly west. Find SW Tualatin Loop south of this highway. It takes off from and returns to SW Johnson Road. To the North of Johnson Road, a short distance east of the east end of SW Tualatin Loop, is a visible road into private property, which is where the Willamette Meteor was found. There used to be a sign noting the location, which is gone now, so I'm doing this from memory, and have not actually visited the site itself. The location is on a ridgetop. The river to the south is the Tualatin, just upstream from its confluence with the much larger Willamette.

An interesting fact about this meteor is that it actually fell to Earth hundreds of miles away, perhaps as far as Canada. Its original resting place will never be known, as the continental glaciers have long since erased any evidence of its original location. It is possible that it fell on glacial ice! Here is how it happened:

During the last Ice Age, a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet repeatedly blocked a fork of the Columbia River, and backed up the entire flow of the river each time for around 60 years, until the glacier floated and quickly (in a very few days) released the whole lake. In one of these events, an iceberg which carried the Willamette Meteorite floated up the Willamette Valley and into the Tualatin Valley.

The flood was impounded behind narrow spots along its path to the ocean, and due to the resulting hydraulic damming, the Willamette and Tualatin Valleys filled to an elevation of about 400 feet. While the water drained out, icebergs were stranded throughout these valleys, usually on ridges, and they left behind as evidence glacial erratics. Some were granite or other exotic rocks not existing locally, and one iceberg held the Willamette Meteorite. There is no impact crater where the Willamette Meteorite was found, and it was laying on top the flat surface. Elevation is about 165 ft. (50 m.).

Whether the Meteorite had fallen near the ice dam or further afield will never be known. The Ice Sheet could have carried it some distance, but that would have likely resulted in erosion of it which is not obvious.

A quick tour explaining the flood is available at http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/virtualtour/index.html . A Google Search will find you many articles on the phenomena of the Missoula (aka Bretz) (aka Spokane) Floods.