ETOWN : TOURING NORTHWEST OKLAHOMA
Space makes its mark in NW OK
The exterior of the Ames Astrobleme Museum .
Photo by BILLY HEFTON
The Ames crater is also notable for being the largest of six oil-producing impact craters in the United States . The oil produced from the original well has a purity rate of 99 %, said Hamm .
The catastrophic strike created by an astrobleme is one of the best oil deposits in the state , a site that helped Enid oilman Harold Hamm stake his future in the oil business .
Enid banker Bert Mackie suggested to Hamm that the history of the discovery of the astrobleme needed to be kept . Hamm built the Ames Astobleme museum that charts the discovery .
The museum in Ames commemorates the discovery of oil and the unusual history behind its creation . Dedicated in 2007 , the Astrobleme Museum and the tourism has been good for Ames .
“ It is surprising how many people come out to walk through the museum ,” Kirchner said .
Panels in the museum illustrate how the meteor struck the Earth and how the hydrocarbons were formed . The formation is so unusual it is one of the few astroblemes producing oil that has been of interest to geologists and scholars since it began producing .
Although the indentation is not visible , a very nice walkthrough museum has been established to interpret the cataclysmic event through videos , computer animations , graphs and charts , and more .
The small town of Ames ( population 183 at the 2020 census ) proudly claims the crater as its own — and as a significant contributor to the geological knowledge of the nation ’ s petroleum industry .
There are 30 known astroblemes or craters in the U . S . caused by objects from space . The largest is the Chesapeake Bay astrobleme twice the size of Rhode Island and as deep as the Grand Canyon .
The Ames Astrobleme Museum is located at 109 E . Main in Ames and is open 24 hours a day . It is an open , walk-through museum .
24