Crater city
Middlesboro makes history with high velocity shock waves
Middlesboro, Kentucky, has many headline-making claims to fame: Explorer Daniel Boone hacked his way into the Kentucky frontier through the Cumberland Gap. Within Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, Pinnacle Overlook’s Three-State marker presents a view of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia from a single spot. Downtown, the Bell County Coal House and Museum shows off decidedly unique architecture in its structure comprising 42 tons of bituminous coal.
The town’s biggest claim to fame, measuring about the size of two football fields in diameter? A meteorite.
According to Kentucky Historical Society Marker Number 2225, “Middlesboro is one of only a few cities on the North American continent located in the basin of a meteorite impact structure.”
The sign, located at 324 12th St., notes that Middlesboro is designated by the Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists as a Distinguished Geological Site and further explains:
“Sometime over the past 300 million years the impact of a meteorite in the heights of the Appalachian Mountains formed a circular basin approximately three miles in diameter in which the city of Middlesboro was built in 1889.”
“That impact would have wiped life as we know it off the face of the Earth in an area between a 50- to 100-mile radius,” says Jes’Anne Givens, director at the Bell County Historical Society Museum.
The museum has an exhibit about the meteor and its impact that includes maps, aerial photos and newspaper articles, as well as examples of shatter cone, compressed rock that is the geological byproduct of a meteoric impact.
“You can see the bowl shape from the Pinnacle Overlook at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park,” says Givens. “Or go to the highest point of the Old Middlesboro Cemetery (also known as the Colson Cemetery) and you’ll feel like you are standing in the center of the bowl.”
The Middlesboro Country Club is at the geographic center of the impact. Established in 1889 and open to the public, it is famous for being the oldest continuously played golf course in the U.S. According to manager Ronnie Cox, the topography of the nine-hole course reflects its unique geographic position.
“The whole golf course sits in a bowl, and golfers can see shatter cone beside the pro shop,” he says.
Although scientists confirmed in the 1960s that the bowl-shaped depression in which Middlesboro sits—known as the Middlesboro Basin—was indeed the result of a meteor impact, Givens says the town’s crater connection wasn’t a big deal when she was growing up here.
“Then around the early 1980s, talk started slowly and eventually it became a big thing,” she says.
Through the years, Middlesboro has been known by many names. Scottish entrepreneur Alexander Arthur founded the town in 1886, named it Middlesborough after the English town and, due to its rich iron deposits, hoped it would become the “Pittsburgh of the South.” (It did not.) For a time in the 1930s, when slot machines, electric street cars and saloons characterized the town, it was called “Little Las Vegas.” Then in the 1950s, with strong grassroots support for the arts, it was briefly dubbed “the Athens of the Mountains.”
Although Middlesboro’s official nickname is Magic City, given the geological significance of the land, it is also called Crater City.
The town celebrates its unique claim to fame with annual events like the Cruisin’ the Crater Car Show, held every third Saturday from May through September; and Rock the Crater Bicycle Ride, which takes place in August and offers cycling routes through Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and the Tri-States area of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
Middlesboro offers several ways to experience its crater origins. Begin at the Bell County Historical Society Museum to learn the history of the Middlesboro Basin. Read Historical Society Marker Number 2225 on 12th Street in downtown Middlesboro, along with Marker 832, which covers the founding of Middlesborough, located nearby at North 20th Street.
In Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, drive Skyland Road up the mountain to the Pinnacle Overlook to see the bowl-shaped depression. Visit Middlesboro Country Club for a round of golf or stroll through the Old Middlesboro Cemetery.
