Annual meteor showers like the Perseids can give lovely shooting star displays – but they don’t produce meteorites. That’s because the tiny particles involved are made of fluffy, low-density clay-like material which burn up before reaching the ground.
On average, a meteorite falls on every half-square-mile of Arizona once every 10,000 years. Almost all are grape-sized or smaller and mostly stony. Many contain iron but only 4% are the densely metallic variety like the one that formed Meteor Crater 50,000 years ago.
Despite being bombarded by cosmic rays in space, meteorites are not abnormally radioactive. Pass a Geiger counter over a fresh one and the chances are it won’t register above background levels, likely giving a lower reading than your granite kitchen counter top!
Since 1912, there have been seven meteorite falls where fragments have been recovered across Arizona – the most recent was in 2024 just west of Phoenix. But Northern Arizona’s most impressive recorded event was on July 19, 1912.
That evening a refrigerator-sized space rock exploded over Holbrook, with a rumbling blast heard 40 miles away. Thousands of fragments rained down along the Santa Fe railroad in a three-mile long path, and these meteorites are still being found today. Mostly grape- to walnut-sized, they contain tiny specks of nickel and iron.
One intrepid meteorite hunter found some of the smallest fragments by dragging magnets over the ground in areas where ants had incorporated the tiny iron-rich fragments into their ant hills.
