Johnstown celebrates return of famous meteorite Saturday – Loveland Reporter-Herald

A 3D replica of the returned Johnstown meteorite sits in a display case at the Glenn A. Jones MD Memorial Library in Johnstown. The city is hosting a centennial celebration Saturday with the theme “I Landed in Johnstown,” the 100th anniversary of the meteorite’s impact in the Johnstown area. (Riley Laub / Loveland Reporter-Herald)

A famous meteorite that landed near Johnstown Cemetery 100 years ago is returning to the spot where it first hit Earth.

The Johnstown Historical Society is hosting the “I Landed in Johnstown” centennial celebration Saturday and will take home a 12-pound meteorite from the 1924 celestial event. Events will be held throughout the day at the cemetery and Roosevelt High School.

The celebrations will begin at 10 a.m. with the dedication of a historic marker and a permanent memorial at the landing site in the cemetery.

From 1pm, the Rock and Gem Show will take place in the RHS’s main hall, where dealers will have the opportunity to sell rocks, gemstones, fossils, meteorites, jewellery and other geological products to visitors. According to Parish House Museum Director Billie Delancey, the salesroom is already completely sold out.

During the rock exhibit, visitors can bring their own rocks or meteors and have them evaluated for free by Colorado School of Mines Museum of Earth Sciences curator Ed Raines.

“We’re hoping some meteorites will come out of the drawers and closets of people who originally found them and never examined them because they (possibly) knew what it was and didn’t want to pay to have it examined,” Delancey said.

During the Stone and Gem Show, there will also be an art exhibition by students and arts and crafts activities for children. The famous meteorite will also be on display during the celebrations.

At 7 p.m., the event will then move into the evening program and three NASA-affiliated speakers will present in the Performing Arts Center auditorium. Dr. Richard Binzel is a NASA scientist who will be joined by Carol Raymond, senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a NASA astronaut, Thomas Jones.

To conclude the festivities, attendees will head outside to the stadium to watch Johnstown’s first drone show, which is expected to begin around 9 p.m.

On June 6, 1924, the meteorites are said to have struck at around 4:20 p.m., interrupting a funeral at Elwell Cemetery. Attendees at the funeral reportedly thought the “world was ending” and interrupted the funeral to investigate the strange event. They used shovels to dig up the 12-pound stone, which will be commemorated on Saturday.

It is one of 27 rocks found at the 1924 crash site, but not the largest. Over a week after the celestial event, a farmer found another rock about a mile and a half from the crash site that weighed just over 51 pounds.

The 51-pound chunk is currently on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The largest pieces, which weigh between 3 and 5 pounds, can also be found at Arizona State University, the U.S. National Museum in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Natural History in London. NASA has also taken samples of the meteorites.

“The pieces are smaller now because NASA gets their cut, they can cut pieces off to study,” Delancey said. “Some people look at it and think, ‘Wow, it doesn’t look that big.’ Well, that’s because they get a piece of the rock for science.”

The stone being returned to Johnstown is currently on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The stone will be returned for one day only and will return to Denver after the centennial celebration.

The meteorite impact was an incredibly rare event, as most meteorites fall into the sea and are rarely observed by humans. The composition of the meteorite itself is also rare, and the way the rocks fell during the meteor shower was also unique.

“Normally the smaller pieces fall out first, followed by the larger pieces. With this meteorite it was the other way round, the larger pieces fell out first, followed by the smaller ones. It is believed that the cause of this was the strong wind that day,” said Delancey.

The Johnstown Historical Society is also hosting a fundraiser during Saturday’s celebration to bring a piece of rock back to town permanently. A QR code will be available at the event that will direct donors to the donation link. Each person at the event who donates $25 to the fundraiser will receive a commemorative coin and a one-year membership to the Johnstown Historical Society.

“This would be a gift from the community to the community,” Delancey said. “These pieces are very expensive and rare to find … there are pieces out there, so we’ll see how much we can raise for them.”

Donations can also be made directly through the Johnstown Historical Society website at jhsco.org. For more information about the celebration, follow us on Facebook at Johnstown Rocks and on Instagram at @johnstown.rocks.