Discover the Biggest Impact Crater in Texas – Over 8 Miles Wide!

Written by Drew Wood
Updated: May 25, 2023
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These days it’s not hard to find a movie or documentary about meteors. Deep Impact, Armageddon, Meteor, and Greenland are just a few of the films that have made Hollywood millions of dollars. They’ve also given millions of people nightmares. When we hear meteors, we think of the space age, but actually they were more common in the prehistoric world.

Just take a look at how the Moon is peppered with craters. The same is true of the Earth. However, due to weather and erosion, most of Earth’s craters are hidden deep underground or on the ocean floor. Let’s discover the Sierra Madera crater, the biggest impact crater in Texas.

flying smoky meteor on background of sky

Most meteors burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere without ever hitting the ground. They’re colloquially called “fireballs” or “shooting stars.”

©Krasowit/Shutterstock.com

A Really, Really Bad Day in Texas

About 100 million years ago, Texas had a really bad day. Maybe the worst day in its whole history. A huge meteor hit, creating the Sierra Madera Crater, an 8-mile diameter impact crater. For comparison, the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona is only about 0.74 of a mile across (3,900 feet). Sierra Madera is about 10 times bigger!

There are a lot of factors that go into how big a crater will be. For example, it depends on what the meteor is made of and how fast it is going. Additional considerations include the angle it hits the Earth and the type of rock and soil it impacts. But to keep this simple, let’s compare these two previously mentioned craters.

Scientists estimate it would take a 10-megaton nuclear bomb to make a crater the size of the Barringer Crater today. If we multiply the Barringer impact by 10 to create the 10-times-bigger Sierra Madera crater, that would suggest we would need a bomb of 100 megatons. This is twice as big as the Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear device ever detonated. And that’s the force a meteor unleashed on West Texas eons ago.

Impact site of a nickel-iron meteorite that fell on earth 49,000 years ago.

This is the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. For comparison, the biggest impact crater in Texas, Sierra Madera, is 10 times larger.

©Grindstone Media Group/Shutterstock.com

What Lived in Texas at That Time?

The Sierra Madera impact happened in the Cretaceous period, which lasted from 145 million to 66 million years ago. Scientists think it happened about 100 million years ago or later. So, what was it like to live in West Texas at that time? At the beginning of it, the area was covered in a shallow sea that was getting shallower and shallower over time. A lot of marine fossils were left behind. Some of them we would recognize in our oceans today, like sea urchins, sea cucumbers, bony fish, and sharks. But there were also prehistoric sea monsters like the brachauchenius and mosasaurus.

After the ocean receded, the whole area was covered in swamps and dense forests, and this is when flowering plants started appearing. Big dinosaurs lived there, like the alamosaurus, a 30-ton plant-eating sauropod, and the chasmosaurus, a three-horned dinosaur similar to a triceratops. You’ll recognize the big carnivore of this time: the tyrannosaurus rex. All of these went extinct when a 3-mile-wide meteor struck what is today the Yucatan Peninsula and brought an end to the dinosaurs. Sierra Madera, in comparison, was just a terrible warning of that larger disaster that was to come.

Mosasaurus

The mosasaurus was one of the large marine predators that roamed the seas of Cretaceous Texas.

©Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock.com

Where Can You See the Biggest Impact Crater in Texas?

Seeing the Sierra Madera crater is not hard. It’s in Pecos County on Highway 385 between Fort Stockton and Marathon, Texas. It’s located on the private La Escalera Ranch, so you can’t get out and explore it on your own, and honestly, maybe you wouldn’t want to if you realized how many rattlesnakes and wild boar live in that area. But it really isn’t necessary because you can get such a good view of it from the highway. After driving over the low ridge that remains of the crater edge, the horizon will be dominated by the central peak where the impact rebounded and left behind a 793-foot-tall mountain. If you want to dive deeper into what the topography looks like from this impact, check out SOAR.earth where you can see a high-resolution topographic map of the site provided by geospatial researcher Michael Davias.

Sierra Blanca and Davis Mountains visible from the I-10 highway headed into Fort Stockton, Texas.

The biggest impact crater in Texas is in Pecos County near Fort Stockton.

©SunflowerMomma/Shutterstock.com

What Are the Chances of It Happening Again?

In August 2022, an asteroid 1600 feet wide, about the size of the one that created the Sierra Madera crater, made a close pass to Earth. It wasn’t a surprise because NASA and other world space agencies keep careful track of every asteroid. They’re working on technologies to divert or destroy them if become a threat and have actually successfully changed the orbit of a small asteroid by crashing a rocket into it.

About once every 2,000 years a meteor the size of a football field (360 feet) hits the earth. Larger ones happen only every few tens of thousands of years or longer. The chances of it happening in your lifetime are slim. And if one did, with the world being 70% covered with water, and 50% of the land almost uninhabited, well there’s only a tiny chance a meteor would hit a populated area.

The odds are so slim, we have far more to worry about for our safety when we get into a car, take a bath, or walk down a set of stairs. Now with all that in mind, what do you think the chances are of a meteor hitting the same place on Earth twice? If you’re really scared of meteors, maybe the safest place in the world is Sierra Madera, Texas.

Where is the Sierra Madera Crater Located on a Map?

Sierra Madera crater, located in the southwestern region of Pecos County, Texas, USA, is a crater formed by a meteorite impact. The central peak of this crater’s rebound structure stands at an impressive elevation of 793 ft compared to the surrounding terrain.

This prominent peak can be easily observed from U.S. Highway 385, which stretches between Fort Stockton and Marathon, Texas.

Here is the Sierra Madera Crater on a map:

The photo featured at the top of this post is © Triff/Shutterstock.com


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About the Author

Drew Wood is a writer at A-Z Animals focusing on mammals, geography, and world cultures. Drew has worked in research and writing for over 20 years and holds a Masters in Foreign Affairs (1992) and a Doctorate in Religion (2009). A resident of Nebraska, Drew enjoys Brazilian jiu-jitsu, movies, and being an emotional support human to four dogs.

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