Archie, Missouri: The Meteorite Town

Archie, Missouri was platted in eighteen eighty and named for Archie Talmadge, the son of a railroad official, when the rail line came through southern Cass County. For most of its history it has been a quiet farming town of a few hundred residents. Then on August tenth, nineteen thirty-two, something fell out of the sky.

A meteor streaked across the Missouri sky and a stone came down near the town. The meteorite received national press coverage and was written up in a scientific journal a few years later. Part of it is held by the Smithsonian Institution, and a piece has been shown at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

The meteorite is catalogued simply as the Archie meteorite. It is, in most respects, the most famous thing to come out of Archie, Missouri, and it came from considerably farther away than anyone expected.