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Johnstown meteorite at the American Museum of Natural History by Jon Taylor, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
A piece of Johnstown meteorite at the American Museum of National History (AMNH).

Johnstown Meteorite

By Jon Pinnow
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July 6, 1924. A funeral procession in what is now Johnstown. 200 mourners are startled by four large explosions. A meteor has streaked into the earth’s atmosphere, and breaks up. Sounds like machine gun fire, whistling, screeching, rumbles, roars, and the smell of sulfur fills the air, leading some to think it's the end of the world. In fact, those mourners were rare witnesses to a meteorite fall. 27 pieces of the Johnstown Meteorite were recovered over a ten-mile area. The largest, more than 50 pounds, embedded itself nearly 6 feet deep into Colorado soil. The rock had interplanetary origins from Vesta, the second-largest and brightest asteroid in the solar system, more than a hundred million miles away, somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

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Colorado Postcards are snapshots of our colorful state in sound. They give brief insights into our people and places, our flora and fauna, and our past and present, from every corner of Colorado. See more postcards.

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