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Oddly, it's suspected to be part of the same event that formed the magnificent Barringer Crater in Arizona, a 3,800-foot-wide, 570-foot-deep, crater-shaped crater that makes the one in Texas look less like a pit and more like a pit stain. You could say Odessa's crater is to Arizona's what Deep Impact was to Armageddon. Though it was once 100 feet deep, today it hardly looks out of place from the surrounding terrain. If somebody hadn't put up a big sign that said "Crater" with an arrow on it, you might think you were just looking at a good place to dump an old couch. Locals have been aware of the crater's existence since the 1890s, but due to its deficiency of depth, nobody realized what it was. At most, it was considered to be the result of an ordinary natural-gas eruption. It wasn't until 1922 that a geologist gave the feature more consideration and realized what it really was, though his discovery went mostly unnoticed. |
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Unfortunately, after all their effort, they realized the drillers had come across nothing more than a particularly tenacious layer of limestone. Their valuable space rock was nowhere to be found. Scientists would later come to understand that the meteor would have destroyed itself on impact. Recently, officials have made a more serious attempt at preserving the crater, adding new facilities and erecting informative signage for self-guided tours. It still takes quite a bit of imagination to understand what really went on here, but the trail makes for a nice place to stretch your legs on a long drive. And with any luck, the county may continue their improvements and get really serious by turning the place into an awesome disaster-themed mini-golf course. |