ETOWN : TOURING NORTHWEST OKLAHOMA
Ames Enid
How do I get there ?
Take U . S . 412 west of Enid until you get to Meno . Take a left on N2710 and ... other than a short right on EW51 ... that will lead you all the way in to town . The museum sits in the middle of town on Main Street .
By Suzie Byrd
About 470 million years ago , a meteor the size of a football field crashed into the area that is now Ames , Oklahoma , producing a crater several miles in diameter .
All that can be seen of it today , however , is a small outdoor musuem that tells the story of the astrobleme , the remnant of a crater formed by a meteorite .
“ I lived here for a long time and didn ’ t know Ames was built in the middle of a crater ,” said town clerk Wendella Kirchner .
The crater cannot be seen on the surface of the earth today because it was subsequently buried by thousands of feet of sediment .
The meteorite that crashed into the earth was a solid object formed from a comet , asteroid or meteorite that formed in outer space . Some of the craters on Earth are visible , and some , like the Ames crater , are full of years of sediment or sediment and water .
The Ames crater was not discovered until the early- ’ 90s when seismic exploration showed its unusual shape — roughly circular and 10 miles across . The exploration in the area was due to Enid Oilman Harold Hamm ’ s search for oil .
The Ames area was not believed to have potential as a major oil producer , but Hamm experimented in 1988 with deeper developments in the area . Wells began producing in the area in 1990 but were considered marginal .
Underneath the ground , Hamm ’ s company found the traces of an
astrobleme . Hamm said the impact crater was a perfect heat and pressure source for making hydrocarbons , from which oil and gas are made .
In the crater they found the mineral granodiorite , a material that was expelled into the air by the impact of the meteor , which then fell back to Earth . An exploration team began working on an anomaly known as the Ames Hole .
A computerized mapping system put large tracts of land in detail . Hamm and his exploration manager began to notice an anomaly they agreed was an astrobleme .
The examination showed it was buried beneath more than 9,000 feet of sediment . A geologist for Hamm ’ s company , Continental Resources , said the crater from the meteor strike was 8 miles in diameter and similar to craters on the moon .
“ If they had not decided to drill oil here , we would have never known about the meteorite ,” Kirchner said .
After extensive examination , a test well drilled at 9,200 feet flowed at 200 barrels an hour . Since that 1991 test , the wells within the astrobleme have produced 17.5 million barrels of oil and 80 billion cubic feet of natural gas .
It was expected to produce more than 25 million barrels of oil and 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas . Gross production tops $ 120 million . The 1991 Oklahoma oil discovery in the hidden meteor crater attracted worldwide attention .
The “ inside ” of the Ames Astrobleme Museum .
Photo by BILLY HEFTON
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