The 12-Ton Visitor
A Tacoma timber cruiser wins the right to claim a massive meteorite found in the Washington national forest after the government bows out.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In his home today, Horace O. Herold, a timber cruiser living in Tacoma, received official notification that the United States government will place no obstacles in the way of his removing from the Washington national forest a huge meteorite weighing between 11 and 12 tons, which he discovered on or about December 20, 1907. E. T. Allen, the district forester with headquarters at Portland, has decided that the government cannot, under the monument act, claim the meteorite. As the discoverer and claimant, Herold is entitled after 17 months of delay to move it away, sell it, or do anything he wants with it, as the government has no more interest in it than it would in a single nugget of gold or a pocket of valuable minerals. Mr. Herold has not yet decided what he will do with the meteor.
“The government has no interest in it any more than it would in a single nugget of gold.”
This odd dispute highlights the early 20th-century uncertainty regarding natural resources on federal land. Today, such a find would be strictly regulated under the Antiquities Act and subsequent federal land policies, far removed from the 'find-and-keep' era of the frontier.
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