Holbrook, AZ is on the old Route 66 road and has an interesting stop. There might be other hotels that are tee-pees but I haven’t seen them before. When I originally researched and added it to the trip I told Dan he should consider booking here for the Holbrook stay because it’s so kitsch (in this case I mean quirky, not lowbrow). The original owner’s family (it was built in 1950) have gone to a lot of work to restore the hotel, add classic cars from the Route 66 heyday, and get the site registered on the Nation Register for Historic Sites (in 2002). As it turns out it was fully booked, which I think was lucky, as I have a reputation for picking hotels for all the wrong reasons. Here are my pics of WigWam Village in Holbrook, AZ.
After a quick tour of Wigwam village, we headed out in the direction of Winslow, AZ (yes, we listened to Jackson Browne sing “Take it Easy”, but we didn’t stand on the corner).
The drive to Meteor Crater in Winslow, AZ was another interesting desert landscape and I had to check Google Earth as we came close to see what to expect. It was eye-opening from Google Earth perspective!
Here is a real picture of the crater from the viewing platform. It was so windy that day that you could not go on the rim walk. The rangers said the wind was blowing up to 50 mph and there are no guard rails at the rim. I don’t know about 50 mph, but it was really blowing at the viewing platform.
About 50,000 years ago a nickel-iron meteorite struck at a velocity of around 29,000 mph. At impact, it was largely vaporized or melted. The crater is still privately owned by the Barringer Crater Company. It you want to know more check the site I linked above or Wikipedia here.
This was an educational stop for several reasons. The visitor’s center has two different movie theaters that have some high-level educational shows about craters and the process of learning how they were developed that happened here. The main theater was playing “Impact, the Mystery of Meteor Crater, which was well done and worth the reasonably short play time. Unfortunately, the 4D theater was having technical difficulties when we were visiting so we didn’t get to see it’s show “Collision”.
This crater is acknowledged as the best-preserved example of an impact crater on earth and has been studied since the late 1800’s. It contributed significantly to developing our current understanding of meteors and their contribution to the earth’s geologic development.
A mining claim was staked by the Standard Iron Company (Daniel M. Barringer’s company) and a land patent was signed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 for one square mile surrounding the crater’s center. The crater continues to be owned privately by the Barringer family through the Barringer Crater Company.
