Since old-timers in Ector County can remember, there has been a big hole on the prairie about eight or nine miles southwest of Odessa. It was not recognized as a hole at all, but more like a big hump standing about six or eight feet above the rest of the prairie.

After this hump was pronounced a possible meteor crater, in 1939, men and machines attempted to unearth Ector's meteorite. An aggregate of more than 130 pounds of the iron fireball was found, and each specimen went to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin, where it was recorded and is exhibited.

The crater shows what happens to Mother Earth when a planet or star drops bombs on her. Geologists have pointed out that, judging from the size of its crater, the Odessa meteorite must have been traveling at a tremendous rate. The size of the splash an extra-terrestrial body makes when it strikes the earth is determined entirely by the speed with which it propels itself through the heavens. The ground for more than 400 feet around the Odessa crater was disturbed. The crater is second in size in this country, the largest having been made by the great Arizona meteor. The greater part of the meteorite which made the Odessa crater probably never will be found. No one has the slightest idea how far down in the earth the star has buried itself.

Just when this giant fragment fell from the skies cannot be determined, but it is estimated that it probably dates back between 40,000 and 75,000 years ago. From fragments of the meteor, authorities have estimated that the meteor body is twenty feet in diameter and weighs 429.3 pounds per cubic foot, but the actual size of the meteor is unknown.

Meteors are extremely valuable to science in that they have a definite report to make of outside planets and stars.

At one time, so far back that the oldest settlers have no legend from the Indians, there was a dense growth of mesquite. When these settlers arrived, the roots of this ancient growth still lay soundly firm with the tap roots buried deep in the soil. One could drive out and lift the dead roots from the ground with a pick ax, loading a two-horse wagon with the dry wood without moving the wagon from its original stopping place. Since these roots burned with intense heat, they were the only fuel used by these early comers.

As buried cities bear mute but unquestioned evidence of a civilization long forgotten, so these roots proved that in past ages mesquite had been thick on these plains. What killed them? It seems probably 'that the only thing which could have killed large areas of such growth would have been a terrible drouth, yet no tradition is known of such widespread and absolute destruction.

When the early pioneers came, they saw not a tree, a bush, or even a clump of weeds to break the monotony of the grassy slopes and depressions which formed the contour of the land. This, too, is our inheritance which has been formed by nature throughout the ages of the past.