Port Orford meteorite hoax

Port Orford meteorite
Class	Pallasite
Country	United States
Region	Oregon
Coordinates	42°48′N 124°06′W
Observed fall	No
Found date	1856 (claimed)
TKW	28 g 10–11 short tons (9,100–10,000 kg) (estimated, claimed)

Letter from John Evans discussing a "meteor" discovered on Bald Mountain in Oregon, dated November 25, 1859

The Port Orford meteorite hoax concerns a 19th-century claimed meteorite discovery near Port Orford, Oregon in 1856. The meteorite has attracted the interest of meteorite hunters, with a value reported as high as $300 million.

Claimed discovery

Dr. John Evans, a medical doctor and government-appointed geologist working for the United States Department of the Interior, claimed to have found a 10-ton (10,000 kg) pallasite meteorite in coastal Oregon (then Oregon Territory) on a "bald mountain" above Port Orford in 1856. Evans returned a sample to the East Coast, but he died of pneumonia in 1861 before the discovery could be corroborated.

Hoax

It has been reported as a hoax, with modern metallurgical and other analysis showing that a 28 gram specimen collected by Evans was actually part of the Imilac Chilean meteorite of 1822 and probably acquired by him in Panama on his return to the United States East Coast. The mountain of Evans' claimed find has been tentatively identified as Johnson Mountain from Evans' reports and field notes; surveys of the area with sensitive proton magnetometers in the 1980s failed to show evidence of a nickel-rich meteorite there.

References

Sources

• Clarke, Roy S. (1993), "The Port Orford, Oregon, Meteorite Mystery", Smithsonian Contributions to the Earth Sciences, 31 (31): 1–43, doi:10.5479/si.00810274.31.1
• R.S. Clarke; et al. (2006), "Meteorites and the Smithsonian Institution", in Gerald Joseph Home McCall; A. J. Bowden; Richard John Howarth (eds.), The History of Meteoritics and Key Meteorite Collections: Fireballs, Falls and Finds, Geological Society of London, p. 242, ISBN 978-1-86239-194-9
• Henderson, E.P.; Dole, Hollis M. (1964), "The Port Orford Meteorite" (PDF), The Ore Bin, 26 (7)
• John, Finn J.D. (December 11, 2011), "The Port Orford Meteorite: Was it all a big hoax?", Offbeat Oregon ( cc-by-sa )
• LaLande, Jeff (2016), "Port Orford Meteorite Hoax", Encyclopedia of Oregon, Oregon Historical Society and Portland State University
• Pruett, J. Hugh (June 15, 2012), "The Lost Port Orford, Oregon, Meteorite (ECN =+ 1245,428:)", Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 4 (16): 286–290, doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.1950.tb00135.x