Now offered is what is among the rarest of collecting opportunities: the ability to acquire a large specimen from a centerpiece exhibit on display at a world-renowned museum.

The Willamette meteorite is the largest meteorite recovered in continental North America. It is also the most famous meteorite in the world. Discovered aboveground in the Oregonian woods, it is believed the meteorite fell in Canada and was conveyed to Oregon by glaciers or floods during the last Ice Age. Had it impacted the find site directly, it would have buried itself well underground given its mass of more than 15 tons. According to Clackamas Indian tradition, the meteorite called “Tomanowos,” or “Heavenly Visitor,” was delivered from the Moon to the Clackamas, and healed and empowered the Native American community in the Willamette Valley since the beginning of time.

It was in 1902 when a miner named Ellis Hughes noticed the meteorite in the wooded property of Oregon Iron & Steel with whom he shared a property line. Hughes moved the meteorite onto a wagon, and using a horse, cables and capstan, over a period of months he moved the massive chunk of iron-nickel onto his land. He charged the public a nominal fee to view the meteorite and in October 1903 the Portland Oregonian reported Hugh’s discovery and the crowds swelled. One of the visitors was an attorney from Oregon Iron & Steel, and he noticed the path extending into his employer’s land. Oregon Iron & Steel subsequently sued and, following a trial, was awarded possession of the meteorite. It was then exhibited at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland where it was seen by more than a million attendees. Among those who took a look was Dr. Henry Ward who wrote the first scientific abstract on the meteorite.

Shortly afterwards, Oregon Iron & Steel sold the meteorite to Mrs. William E. Dodge who gifted the meteorite to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. For the last 120 years the meteorite has been on display at the Museum where it has been seen or touched by an estimated 75 million people.

Its residency at the Museum has not been uneventful as two additional custody disputes ensued. In 1990, tens of thousands of Oregonian schoolchildren signed petitions to have the meteorite returned to Oregon. In the U.S. Senate, a bill was proposed to support the schoolchildren’s ambitions and a congressman from Oregon proposed withholding federal funding earmarked for the Museum until the meteorite was returned. A concerted effort was made to convince the childrens’ mentors to discontinue this civics lesson — and the childrens’ campaign was dropped.

In 1999, a coalition of tribes of Oregonian Native Americans, The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, filed a claim to have the meteorite returned to Oregon by invoking the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) — typically used to retrieve burial remains and crafted artifacts. In response, the Museum filed a lawsuit in federal court in which the Grand Ronde’s claims were contested. The parties eventually settled out-of-court declaring that the meteorite was Museum property. As part of the settlement, it was agreed the Willamette meteorite can never again be sampled or cut.

The Willamette is the centerpiece exhibit in the Rose Center for Earth & Space.
As a result of its beauty and fame, for decades textbooks used an image of Willamette to illustrate the appearance of a meteorite — but this was misleading. No other meteorite looks similar to Willamette, but still today porous basalt (solidified lava) is regularly mistaken to be a meteorite as a result of Willamette’s unique appearance.

Willamette’s unique shape is likely the result of inclusions having melted during frictional heating in the atmosphere, which then caused small depressions in which water pooled and continued to oxidize its metallic matrix over thousands of years. As evidenced by its singularly unique crystalline structure, the Willamette meteorite is described as being recrystallized. It is believed this occurred as a result of a cataclysmic collision on its parent asteroid hundreds of millions of years ago.

This section was cut from the crown section of the meteorite in 1997 by Museum Curator, Dr. Marty Prinz, who wished to provide a glimpse of the meteorite’s internal structure to the public. Despite a wave of criticism for having cut the meteorite, science was greatly served. After Dr. Prinz passed away, the curator of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, Darryl Pitt, noticed unusual bubbling at the margin of one of the sulfide inclusions and contacted the world’s foremost expert on iron meteorites, Dr. John Wasson of UCLA who wrote in part, “These bubbles are fascinating. We cannot remember having seen angular FeS fragments entrained into a eutectic melt before.”

It was as a result of this anomaly that the Willamette meteorite was the featured December 2015 cover story in Meteoritics and Planetary Science — the most important scientific journal devoted to meteorites. A team of researchers led by this author, made the case for the reclassification of the most famous meteorite in the world. Dr. Prinz’s decision to cut the meteorite proved to be prescient.

Delimited by its natural external surface, Willamette’s singular crystalline structure is seen on the front and reverse. From a centerpiece exhibit at one of the most famous museums in the world, now offered is a thick slab from the crown section of the most famous meteorite in the world. A notable offering, this will forever be among the largest specimens of the Willamette meteorite available.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue.
199 x 137 x 21mm (8 x 5.33 x 0.75 in.) and 1.26 kilograms (2.75 lbs)

American Museum of Natural History, New York City
Macovich Collection of Meteorites, New York City