What is the Willamette meteorite?
Willamette is a 15.5-tonne iron meteorite found in Oregon in 1902, the largest found in the United States, and sacred to the Clackamas people.
The Willamette meteorite is the largest meteorite found in the United States and one of the largest in the world. It weighs about 15.5 tonnes and measures about 3 metres long.
Discovery. In 1902, a settler named Ellis Hughes found the iron mass on land near the town of West Linn, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley. The land belonged to the Oregon Iron and Steel Company. Hughes secretly moved the meteorite onto his own land, taking about three months. A court case followed, and the courts ruled that the meteorite belonged to the company.
Museum. In 1906, it was bought and donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it remains on display.
Appearance. Willamette is an iron meteorite of the IIIAB group. Its surface is deeply pitted with cavities, formed largely by weathering as it lay on Earth for thousands of years. It may have been transported to Oregon from elsewhere by ice-age floods.
Sacred object. The meteorite, which they call Tomanowos, is sacred to the Clackamas people, now part of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. In 2000, the museum and the tribes reached an agreement allowing tribal members to hold ceremonies with the meteorite each year, and stating that if the museum ever stopped displaying it, ownership would pass to the tribes.
Significance. Willamette shows how meteorites can have both scientific and deep cultural importance.