People/geologist, magnate

Daniel M. Barringer

Daniel M. Barringer (1860–1929), geologist, magnate, from United States. Linked to silver, gold, iron ore.

The lucky break

Mining ventures including a gold mine near Cochise and the Commonwealth Silver Mine made him wealthy. In 1902 he heard of the Arizona crater and became convinced it was a meteorite impact.1

The downfall

His Standard Iron Company drilled seven shafts in the crater floor from 1903 to 1908 and found no buried iron mass. The scientific community did not accept his impact theory in his lifetime.1

Legacy

Eugene Shoemaker's research gave proof of the impact origin in 1960.1

Story cards

Sources

  1. 2026 Inductees from Mining's Past Mining Foundation of the Southwest

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0); South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0).