Meteor Crater, between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona, 1945

About this postcard

The view looks across the broad bowl of Meteor Crater from the rim, with the flat, pale expanse of the surrounding Colorado Plateau stretching to the horizon. The crater sits in northern Arizona south of Highway 66 between Winslow and Flagstaff. Long known as Barringer Crater, it was the first impact crater on Earth to be positively identified as such, after mining engineer Daniel Moreau Barringer argued in the early 1900s that a meteorite had formed it. The crater is roughly 700 feet deep and three miles around. By the 1940s the site was a well-known roadside stop for travelers on the transcontinental highway, and visitors could easily reach it from the road. Popular accounts of the period estimated the meteor at five million tons and described it as iron, nickel, and platinum.