Roman,
Forget searching Meteor Crater... even out to distances of more than 7
miles... Bar-T-Bar (aka Meteor Crater Enterprises) controls all of the
land even at that distance.
And if you do expect to be harassed, by
1) Being accosted by their "security guards" sometimes dressed like
State Park Rangers. (They did this to me in 1979 on State Lands several
miles away from the Crater in broad daylight. They wanted to
"confiscate" my detector and when they went to get a rifle from their
truck to make the point I produced my pistol holster with the gun holstered,
and said "Don't go there. You made your point, and you won't get my
detector at gunpoint. I am leaving. But when I get to
Flagstaff, I will file a police report of this incident... Which I did.)
2) All of the above, and now expect to be thrown into. A) The
Winslow Jail (a very bad place) B) The Flagstaff Jail ( a better
place). And expect to spend a day or two there before a hearing before a
judge.
3) Charges will be filed against you for "criminal trespass" and
"meteorite poaching" on State and Private lands.
4) A trial date will be set and you will be released, sans your detector
and any meteorites you might have found, and you will have to hire a lawyer
and pay him good money to defend yourself..
5) A court case will be initiated where you will have to appear at
least once or several times.
6) And after you have expended a considerable amount of money, and
time, Bar-T-Bar (aka Meteor Crater Enterprises) and or the AZ State Land
Department will drop the charges after they have made the point. (I know
of no case that they have prosecuted to the finish... They drop their
cases every time.)
7) Before you consider going through all of the above, you might just go
to Stewarts outside of Holbrook and look at and buy some of their very large
Canyon Diablo's . They range from grams to 50 lbs. Beautiful
specimens, all fresh dug. (I wonder who it is that has "Meteor Crater"
permission to market them through Stewarts, so as to avoid the first 6 things
that I outlined above. It is a question that I have had for quite some
time. Stewarts, won't say.)
Steve Schoner/ams
P.S. You are right about the science at Meteor Crater. With
the exception of Dr. Shoemaker's work in the late 1950's and that of Dr.
Roddy... NO SIGNIFICANT SCIENCE HAS BEEN DONE OUT THERE. Why?
Because according to the managers..."All the science that needs to have been
done has already been done."
Period.
(There are two well known meteorite dealers here on
MetList that can elucidate on their experiences out there on those
public lands. Find out the what happened to them, and the legal
harassing that they went through. It is an eye opener. I could
provide their names off list and you can e-mail them directly)
Sorry for "ranting" but the Meteor Crater situation does tick me
off.
Steve Schoner/ams
