Dear Mark Bostick and list. Enjoyed the reprint you posted re: the large meteorite of June 11, 1901 as reported in the Denver paper June 21. I too checked and could find no mention of a recovery, however I was able to locate Los Molinas and am very familiar with the town of Altar, Sonora, Mexico. El Progresso, the Mexican paper which first reported the meteor is still operating - perhaps it would be worth delving through their files to see if sufficient eye witnesses reported it to allow triangulation.
Reading the report triggered my aging memory, and looking through my copy of NEW TRAILS IN MEXICO, by Carl Lumholtz, 1912, I found a report of another meteor(ite) very near to that area, occurring November 5, 1910. Lumholtz was a prolific explorer, ethnographer, geologist, and all around adventurer, with a keen eye for detail and desire to chronicle his discoveries. I'll quote below in part his report. At Rancho de Macias, on November 5, in the afternoon, a splendid meteor was observed. The engineers and the geologist had promised to dine with me that evening in return for hospitality that I had enjoyed at their hands. It was after dusk, but not quite night yet, and I was unpacking some Norwegian delicacies which were to serve as my pièce de résistance, when suddenly loud shouts of admiration were heard, "Mira, mira! no mas!" As I instinctively turned my eyes over our wagon toward the North I beheld a large and resplendent orb, with a long tail, passing slowly and majestically over the heavens, roughly speaking from west to east. The color was bluish white at the start, and the size appeared as one-sixth the size of the full moon; the unusually long tail appeared as if it might be six inches long, if seen near by. To our eyes the meteor moved so slowly that it might have been photographed. It grew smaller and smaller, both body and tail, the latter disappearing first, when the globe itself, now yellowish red burst into two pieces, the smaller one going upward. Perhaps a quarter of the horizon was passed. - - - - - - Later I learned that the same phenomenon had been observed at Altar. (Yes, this is the same Altar as mentioned from the 1901 fall) At Sonoita it appeared to Sr. Isaurao Quiroz as if "it disappeared twenty meters above the horizon, first sending one piece to the north-west and another to the south-east, the latter dissolving into thirty or forty red and blue sparks, and as resplendent as the sun." Sr. Bonillas, the geologist, some time before, had seen one of the same size at three o'clock in the afternoon at Nogales. End of quote. I've poured over old and new maps and aerial surveys of the area and have pinpointed every site described. A busy place around that part of Mexico, I guess. The Carbo (front cover A to Z) was not terribly far south of there, and the Huizopa was recovered east of that area near the Sonora/Chihuahua border. And Arizpe was not far north of Huizopa. And, And. Must be a huge underground mass of magnetite drawing so many meteors in that part of Mexico. Just kidding. Anyone want to do more research? Larry Johnson IMCA #6116 ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list