Meteor Crater, Arizona. After the interest expressed by German immigrant Fred W. Volz and meteorite collector Albert E. Foote, mining magnate Daniel Barringer also enters the scene: he hopes and believes that the small metallic fragments found near the crater are merely crumbs of the main body of the meteorite, which, if metallic, would be worth a fortune just by weight of iron and nickel. He purchases management of the crater area from the federal government and has deep mining carried out, finding traces of iridium and platinum, extremely rare on Earth. He estimates the asteroid’s mass at 1 million tons, which at the time was worth $200 million in iron (in 1902! – today that would be over $5 billion!!!). He then creates the Standard Mining Co. He will never find the main body, as it likely crumbled and pulverized before impact. He spent his entire fortune on the venture for years, and to this day Meteor Crater remains on federal land but is privately managed by his descendants. Daniel Barringer died of a heart attack at age 69 in September 1929, without ever having made a dollar from the crater, which is now also known as Barringer Crater.
