Meteorites in the United States

Finds & Falls

According to the data base of the Meteoritical Society about 1500 verified meteorites have been found in the United States (finds + falls as of July, 2007). Below is a map depicting how many have been found in each state.

Many of the meteorites were found as multiple stones, sometimes years apart. The total number of individual stones is not known but is probably several times the number of meteorites. (By convention, if a meteoroid breaks apart in the atmosphere or when it hits the earth, all the fragments are considered a single meteorite with one name.)

The earliest find is Havana, an iron meteorite that was found by native Americans in prehistoric times and made into beads. The beads were later found in the Dickson Mounds archaeological site near Havana, Illinois, in the 1940's.

Bottom line: Only about 1500 verified meteorites have been found in the U.S. in the past 200 years.

Falls

There have been 140 observed and recorded meteorite falls in the U.S. in the past 200 years. The first was Weston (Connecticut) in 1807. (It is about the Weston meteorite that Thomas Jefferson is reported to have written, "I would more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven.")

Note that although there were fewer people and the country was less settled during the first 100 years, the number of falls from 1807 through 1906 (52, or 0.52 per year) is not much less than the number of falls between 1907 and 2006 (86, or 0.86 per year).