Meteor Crater

50,000 years ago when Northen Arizona was inhabited by wooly mammoths, a meteor about 150 feet across and weighing 165,000 tons slammed into the cool wet grasslands 35 miles east of Flagstaff at more than 28,000 miles per hour. It left an impact crater that today is 4,000 feet across and 570 feet deep.
50,000 years later, Carolyn and I visited Meteor Crater and were quite impressed. Driving across the flat land leading up to it you have no sense of what is to come.

The impact created a rim 150 feet high that hides the crater. (Carolyn is standing on the north rim.)

Only after climbing the rim do you see the immensity below. The energy released by the collision was 150 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Life within 3 miles of the hit was killed instantly. 1200 mph winds were sent out flattening everything for 13 miles in all directions. Life didn't return to the vicinity of the crater for a century.
In 1903, engineer Daniel Barringer first suggested the crater was a meteor impact site. His theory was confirmed in 1960 by Gene Shoemaker. Meteor Crater, the first proven impact crater on Earth, is also the best preserved.