How the Travis County Meteorites Came to Light
By Arthur Ehlmann

One of my personal friends and certainly one of the pioneers in the active pursuit of meteorites in the United States, particularly in the U.S. Southwest, is Mr. Oscar E. Monnig of Fort Worth, Texas. Over a period of ten years starting in the mid 70's, the extensive Monnig Meteorite Collection was transferred to the Department of Geology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Upon completion of the transfer, Mr. Glenn Huss, of the American Meteorite Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, carefully labeled every specimen and checked the paper labels for accuracy. As Curator of this fine collection, I and co-workers have been privileged to classify and to make scientific investigations on a number of the specimens.

An intriguing interest of mine has developed from reading the extensive correspondences in the Monnig files which accompanied the transfer of the collection. The detective work leading to the retrieval of the Travis County, Texas, meteorites is one of those fascinating stories and is the subject of this article. It exemplifies the dedication and the considerate treatment of people that characterized Mr. Monnig. The story is gleaned almost entirely from the file correspondence and from his detailed notes made following investigative trips.

Skimpy Clues

As background to Mr. Monnig's search, the first public mention of the Travis County meteorite occurred when a chemical analysis of it appeared by Eakins in 1890 (see Bull. U. S. Geolog. Survey #78, p. 91). All that was known at that time was that a 2.5 kg piece had been given to the U. S. National Museum by Dr. Robert T. Hill, the first state geologist of Texas, who had been given the specimen by someone named George Penn. Practically nothing, other than the county of supposed origin, was known about the meteorite. Dr. Hill's role in this is surely why the synonym "Hill's stone" appears in the Catalogue of Meteorites (1985).

Forty years later in the 1930s, Oscar Monnig found the 1890 citation by Eakins and developed an interest in finding the Travis County locality and hopefully of finding more of the meteorite because the analyzed specimen was reported to be a "broken piece." Recognizing that the first link in the search was Dr. Hill, a visit was arranged to see him in 1937 although he had retired and was in increasingly poor health. Hill, unfortunately, had learned nothing of the locality from George Penn (apparently because the proffered specimen was an attempt to determine if there was some value to be realized from the rest of the meteorite whose location was known only to Mr. Penn). Fortunately, Dr. Hill knew several crucial facts about Mr. Penn: 1) he was a conductor on a "local" train that ran from Austin to Burnett, Texas, 2) he had no permanent residence locally, and 3) he was a well-known "domino player" in Leander, Texas, a mid-point on the railroad line.

The Chase

Armed with this knowledge, Mr. Monnig and a friend, Mr. Corwin Butler, travelled by Ford Model T car, the approximately 200 miles from Fort Worth to Leander, Texas, in the Summer of 1937 in the hopes of finding the trail of George Penn. Arriving in the town of Leander, the two decided first to go to the "telephone exchange" where two ladies "responded kindly to our questions" but did not know George Penn ( readers now may not be aware that in the early days of telephones, the telephone operators knew almost all of the "goings on" in their town). The ladies, however, suggested contacting a "railroad man" who lived right
across the street.

This railroad man did not know of George Penn but suggested that another "railroad man" two blocks down the street might know of him. The trail there warmed a little when the second railroad man, who also did not know Mr. Penn personally, did know someone "on the other side of town" who very probably knew him. Unfortunately, this person "was on his death-bed and his wife might not let him be bothered." Taking a chance, Mr. Monnig and friend, went to the house and found the wife to be "kindness personified" in letting us speak to the man.

That visit turned out to be fruitful because the man said "I really don't know much about him but all you have to do is take the Bagdad Cemetery road, there is a place up there were George Penn was well known." On finding that place, a woman appeared on the porch who became "instantly excited" in response to an inquiry about Mr. Penn and his meteorite. "Oh, I know all about that, it was found on the Sunset Ranch. There's a meteorite up there as big as that iron wash pot over there" ( a little exaggeration to whet the appetite). She further stated "Some fellow came through here in 1912 or 1915 looking for it." Elation was soon over, however, when the woman related that the Sunset Ranch had 25,000 acres (38.5 square miles).

On receiving directions to the Sunset Ranch, the undaunted investigators set out on a road that was "very narrow, very rocky and not easy to negotiate." The ranch headquarters building was finally reached and, on knocking, a man "very receptive and courteous" came to the door. It was Mr. Albert Lunsford, the foreman of the ranch, who was shortly joined by his 10 year old son.

The Plot Thickens

Essentially the story given them by Albert Lunsford was that "a good many years ago" (he thought to be in the late 1880's) an uncle of his had found some "unusual looking, heavy rocks at the head of Barn's Hollow while bee hunting (actually searching for honey)." He had brought them, or, as it now seems more likely, a piece of one of them, back to the ranch headquarters on horseback. Although Lundsford knew of no connection with George Penn, it appears that many local people were aware of these strange rocks, and, decided that, because Penn was regularly in Austin, he could take a piece to Dr. Hill, the state geologist. The secrecy of the local people about the locality of the meteorite find was undoubtedly because of possible monetary value. Whether or not any reply was ever made to George Penn is unknown. Apparently he, in the meantime, had moved back to Kentucky, his original residence, and dropped the whole matter.

Albert Lunsford added that someone had come by the ranch at sometime after the original discovery to search for the meteorite but had not been successful because of "thick undergrowth and the shedding of needles from the pine trees (a local name for mountain cedar which grows profusely in the area)." Although not a particularly hopeful situation for recovery of more specimens at this juncture, Monnig states in his notes that the foreman was friendly and helpful and, therefore, "because of his interest, I gave him an indoctrination on meteorites and how they look." Because the mode of travel on the ranch was horseback, "I asked Mr. Lunsford to mount his horse and to look on the ground at the Tulia meteorite specimen which I had placed there so that he could see how a meteorite looked from atop a horse." Mr. Monnig, impressed by Mr. Lunsford's interest and sincerity" left his name and address and the Tulia specimen in the hope that the ranch people might find something in their daily work. As Mr. Monnig notes, "we jogged our way home (to Fort Worth) and I let the matter rest."

Jackpot!

"Within a few weeks of our visit to the ranch" in 1937, Frank Lunsford, the brother of the foreman, wrote that he had found a 2.7 kg meteorite specimen about one quarter mile from the ranch headquarters. This specimen had been recognized because it closely resembled the Tulia specimen left on the ranch for comparison. As instructed by Monnig, the finder had confirmed it to be a meteorite when he filed a small area on the specimen revealing the darker interior with flecks of metal. A few weeks later, Pauline Lunsford, a niece, who had seen the Tulia stone and the stone found by her uncle, pried a 3.2 kg stone meteorite from the roadbed of the same small dirt road Monnig had taken from Leander to the ranch. Her brother, on
seeing the other meteorites, had mentioned to her that a similar-looking "rock" was sticking out of the road at a particular spot and that the next time she road to town on horseback, she should look for that rock. A road grader had recently scraped over the specimen exposing some of the interior, making it more obvious than when only its weathered surface was observable. It turned out that these two stones, found one half-mile apart, were just the beginning.

A Still Bigger Jackpot!

Incredibly, the big discovery was yet to come. On June 23, 1939, Albert Lunsford wrote to Mr. Monnig requesting him to come down to the ranch because there was "a very interesting matter to talk over" and that surely Mr. Monnig would know "what it was about." The trip to the ranch from Fort Worth was made on July 1, 1939.

On his arrival at the ranch, Albert Lunsford went over to a closet and showed Mr. Monnig three large meteorites wrapped in sacks. The weights turned out to be 53.6, 52.7 and 21.3 kg. Albert Lundsford had gone by horseback to the area that he thought might be where the original specimens had been found in the 1880s because that area was then in the process of being cleared of the mountain cedar trees and other native brush by a group of Mexican laborers. As a result, the ground was much better exposed and any meteorites there might be easily seen.

On either side of a poorly marked trail, judged to be the trail much used in the 1880s, the three large specimens were found. The sizes and the shapes matched closely with what little was known, or remembered, from the original discovery many years before. In fact, one of the large specimens had a chip missing which reasonably was the piece taken to Dr. Hill in Austin by George Penn in 1889. The specimens were large enough to cause some problems with transporting them back to the ranch headquarters. Mr. Lunsford brought back a "jack" (donkey or burro, as locally known) to the site, suspended the meteorite from a tree limb, then moved the "jack" underneath, and gradually lowered the specimens into carrying sacks straddling the animal.

Although the discovery of these large specimens was undoubtedly the high point of the search, the laborers clearing the land found additional specimens. Because the ranch people became more and more familiar with the appearance of stony meteorites and because the area of the strewn field became more apparent, the discovery of additional specimens continued over the next 23 years. The total number of individuals and fragments in the Monnig collection is now 52, the last having been found in 1962. In 1980, Mr. Glenn Huss, in cataloging the Monnig collection, suggested there were three different finds represented in the Travis County specimens.

The Science of the Travis County Find

Recently, we (see Meteoritics, Vol. 30, p. 348, McCoy, Ehlmann and Keil, 1995) have finished studying this large group of stone meteorites. Our determination indicates there are two finds represented, Travis County (a) with 44 specimens and total weight of 176 kg, and Travis County (b) with 8 specimens and total weight of 5.5 kg. Travis County (a) is a fine example of a shock-blackened H5 ordinary chondrite and Travis County (b) is an H4 brecciated ordinary chondrite. Without a doubt, the original piece of meteorite brought to Dr. Hill by the state geologist, was one of the large Travis County (a) specimens.

Who Do We Owe?

As scientists, we often tend to neglect the crucial role played by highly motivated people like Oscar Monnig. We owe much to those who expended enormous amounts of energy to retrieve these specimens. There is little doubt that the Travis County meteorites would never have come to light without the efforts of my good friend, Oscar E. Monnig.

Arthur J. Ehlmann is an Emeritus Professor of Geology, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas, 76129, USA.

E-mail: ehlmann@gamma.is.tcu.edu