[meteorite-list] Fr. Steve Arnold - The Brenham Story

[Notkin]

Dear Friends and Listees:

Our friend Steve Arnold IMB has asked me to forward this on his behalf.


Geoff N.



**************



Hello List,
 
What an incredible ride this has been the last two months, and 
especially this last week. I am reading all of your posts to the List 
but, being on AOL, am unable to post back. I suppose I could get a 
Yahoo address to post from, but for now I will route this through 
Geoff.
 
This whole project is much too long of a story to write now, and I am 
confident there will be some way I can get more of it to you later, but 
I wanted to take time to share a little with you now, as many of you 
seem genuinely interested.
 
First off, I have to give credit where it is due. First, to my wife, 
Qynne, who has stuck with me in this business for fifteen 
years. Without her support, none of this would have been 
possible. Second goes out to Phil Mani. Phil has evolved from a good 
customer to a great friend and now a fantastic business partner on this 
project. Phil is an attorney and his legal background has allowed me a 
great partner in making sure all the details get covered correctly. His 
financial help has just been the tip of the iceburg when it comes to 
his contribution. Without him, the "King of Pallasites" would still be 
88 inches under ground in Kiowa County.
 
I have to thank Geoff Notkin for all the help he has given. I seriously 
don't think a tiny fraction of the media coverage that we have churned 
up would have happened without his expert help. And lastly, a great 
amount of thanks have to go to the land owners of the Brenham Township, 
especially Allen and Mary Binford. If the Binfords had not so 
cheerfully invited me up to hunt on their land when I first called, I 
might have been discouraged at the start. Once I got there, the 
hospitality I received from them and their family was a real treasure 
that I can't put a price tag on. Fortunately, it is a treasure I won't 
have to auction off to the highest bidder.
 
Now for the story:
 
For years I have wanted to hunt the Brenham site. On my return trip 
from the Denver Show in September, my daughter Kelsey and I decided to 
visit the 1,000 pound Brenham on display in Greensburg, Kansas. It was 
there that I was reminded of some research I came across maybe seven or 
eight years ago, research that led me to believe there should be at 
least one more meteorite on the land now owned by Allen and 
Mary Binford. The rest of the trip home I could not get the idea of 
hunting that site out of my mind.
 
When I returned I decided to share what my research had revealed with 
my friend Phil Mani. When I finished telling it all to him, I said, "I 
really think there is something there waiting to be found." Phil shot 
back with, "I know there is -- when are you going?"
 
I told him that money was a little tight right now and hunting Brenham 
would require special equipment, money to get there, money to stay 
there, and then I would not be making any money doing other things when 
I was there. He bluntly responded: "What is it going to take?"
 
We came to an agreement to partner in the project. The next part was to 
get permission from Mr. Binford to search his property. So I called 
him, told him I was a meteorite hunter and that I thought there might 
be some meteorites on his property. I asked for permission to hunt. He 
said, "Come on up, but you better hurry as I am going to be planting 
wheat in a couple of weeks and once it is planted you will have to wait 
until next summer to hunt after it is harvested."
 
I got back with Phil and we decided to jump on the opportunity 
immediately. In making the plans, Phil said, "If we are going to do 
this, we should do it right." For those of you who don't know Phil, he 
is a geologist and an oil and gas attorney. Phil mentioned that in the 
oil and gas business, if there is a promising area to explore, the 
prudent thing to do is to go and get exclusive lease agreements for the 
site you  want AND all the adjoining properties as well. 

So that is what we did. 

When we arrived, we discovered that a precedent had been set 
seventy-odd years earlier by Nininger, and then again with Stockwell in 
the 1940s. Both Nininger and Stockwell agreed that they would give a 
percentage of any Brenham finds with the land owners. This precedent 
gave us only one option: if we were going to be allowed to hunt, we'd 
have to pay the landowners cash up front for exclusive hunting leases, 
as well as a large percentage of anything we might find. We quickly 
realized that we had to cut the landowners in, or WE would be cut out. 
 
Remember, this is not only farm land, there is oil and gas under this 
land as well. The farmers we've met are business savvy people. I have 
invested nearly two months building relationships with my new 
neighbors, and I am proud to have them "on our team."
 
Since we were preparing to invest mutliple tens of thousands of dollars 
-- and hundreds of hours -- into the project, we set up these leases to 
protect both the landowners and our investment. With wheat planting 
about to begin, we had to hurry -- not only to get the leases, but to 
start hunting as well. 

It wasn't long after I started searching that I found a nice all-iron 
specimen. This encouraged me to keep hunting and it proved that my 
hypothesis was correct: there were more out there. 
 
I kept hunting, and about two weeks into it I found a real strong 
signal. Phil was scheduled to be up from Texas three days later so I 
held off on calling in the back hoe until he arrived. I was confident 
that we had a meteorite, but little did I know WHAT a meteorite it 
was! On Sunday afternoon, October 16, the back hoe arrived and 
excavation of the greatest find of my life began.
 
Being careful not to scratch the target, we dug a little at a time, 
with me jumping in periodically to check the spot with my weaker 
hand-held detector. It would only go down about twelve inches, but it 
would let us know if the back hoe bucket could safely take out another 
scoop or two of dirt. We dug two feet or so, and nothing. We dug 
another two feet, and nothing. Second-guessing my original signal, we 
had the back hoe pull away and we went over the area again with the big 
detector. The strong signal was still there under the empty hole. 
 
This was encouraging as it indicated a large specimen that had 
penetrated deep into the ground. We dug another couple feet, and still 
no signal from the hand-held. Again we rechecked, and again the big 
detector said something was there. About 64 inches down I ran the hand 
held over the center of the hole and got a strong beep. A shovel was 
handed to me. I stuck it into the dirt and was greeted with the 
ever-so-sweet "tink" of the metal spade contacting with the evasive 
target we were searching for. 
 
The plan was to dig out around the specimen to determine how big it was 
and how we would get it out of the ground. If it was small enough to 
fit into the back hoe bucket, I would just roll it in, if not we would 
have to tie it with a towing strap and drag it out. Finding the edges 
of the meteorite quickly revealed that we had a monster on our 
hands. Maybe not as big as the 1,000 pound specimen found by H.O. 
Stockwell in 1949, but it could be.  
 
The top of the meteorite proved to be very rough, with great character, 
not rounded like most Brenhams. "Gnarly" was the word that came to 
mind. But a three-foot by two-foot gnarly rock was fine with me. We 
didn't know how deep the rock went, but the sides seemed to be sloping 
in enough that we could get the strap around it secure enough to lift 
out. I figured we had a thin rock, maybe ten inches across, that might 
weigh 800 or 900 pounds.
 
We got the strap around it and the back hoe started to lift. Screaming, 
the back hoe was not able to lift the rock extended as it was. An 
adjustment had to be made by the operator -- he pulled the bucket in 
closer so the larger hydraulics would be doing the lifting. After 
possibly thousands of years of being trapped in the soil, the rock was 
once again airborne.
 
The "bunker buster" as we were calling it was being hoisted up. It 
slowly started to rotate in its swing. Phil saw it first and he could 
not contain his excitement. He hollered out over the noise of the 
diesel engine: "It's oriented Steve, it's oriented!"
 
Indeed it was. 
 
I was in shock.
 
It was obvious that this specimen was much bigger than the old 1,000 
pound main mass. It had a gorgeous nose cone facing down, with what was 
now -- clearly -- a concave back side. We had found the world's largest 
oriented pallasite! An hour or so later, we took Mr. Binford's pick-up 
truck to the scales at the grain elevator and weighed the truck without 
the meteorite. We then put the meteorite in the back of his truck and 
weighed it again. The weight was 1,430 pounds, or exactly 650kg: 43% 
larger than Stockwell's biggest. 
 
All of a sudden the nick name "bunker buster" didn't seem appropriate. 
Many will always consider Esquel to be the "Queen of the Pallasites" 
and rightfully so. And so, a few days after the excavation, the name 
"King of the Pallasites" struck me as a more fitting title for this 
majestic specimen.
 
So now what?
 
Well, we are promoting the "King" via the media. The news story has 
taken off even more than we expected. It is having a viral effect, 
spreading far beyond the coffee tables in Kiowa County, Kansas, and the 
conversations of meteorite collectors. I will let Phil post the story 
of what happened last week at his club in San Antonio. That story shows 
just how fascinated people are with this discovery. 
 
While we are promoting this rock to sell, I am also preparing to hunt 
more. I was obsessed with finding the borders of the Park Forest 
strewnfield, and I am determined to do the same here. Due to the amount 
of land we have leased, that is going to take a long time. I bought a 
small house in Kiowa County last weekend, and I'll be working out of 
there.
 
It is a long term project I have committed myself to. While I will be 
doing most of the physical exploration, Phil has made a very 
substantial commitment for the long term on this project as well. While 
I do feel very fortunate that I made this find early on, I am not 
kidding myself. There is a lot more to do. 
 
I know many of you are probably now wanting to hunt at Brenham, and I 
don't blame you. However, due to the tremendous financial investment 
and investment of time that have made, we are not able to invite people 
to hunt in the area with us at this time. We hope you will appreciate 
the situation we are in. 
 
As a friendly warning: if you do come up to Brenham to hunt meteorites, 
you are going to be disappointed, unless you want to hunt WAY outside 
of the strewnfield area. Our long-term exclusive hunting leases have 
been made with all the available land owners within the known strewn 
field, and then some. 
 
There is some information about our project that we are wanting to keep 
private at this time, but I am certain that most, if not all of it, 
will come out eventually. If you ask Phil or myself questions about 
what we are doing or how we are doing it, you might find us a little 
hesitant in sharing too much, too quickly, as we have paid a high price 
in learning what we have so far. 
 
While we intend to keep some information to ourselves for now, one 
thing we hope everyone will get to share in is the increased interest 
in meteorite collecting that is happening now among the 
general public. "A rising tide lifts all ships" is an appropriate 
analogy here, I think. Just the talk of a meteorite that might be worth 
$1,000,000 is enough to make some people stop and consider meteorite 
collecting as a hobby. I believe that this will be a very good thing, 
especially among the dealers. And, if you are a collector who would 
like to see the value of your collection go up this could be, for you 
too, a very good thing.
 
If the "King of the Pallasites" is still unsold by February, 2006, we 
fully intend on bringing it to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show for 
public viewing. If you are interested in seeing it in person before 
then, please contact either Phil or me and we can discuss the 
arrangements.


 From the land of Oz and Awes and Ooohs & Ahhhs,

Steve Arnold

http://www.worldrecordmeteorite.com