If you ever see a meteor in the nighttime sky, you will likely be either speechless with wonder or poetic in awe. It is unlikely you would be indifferent.
For 62-year-old William W. Barrett, words came easily as he described a summer Saturday-night meteor display in 1894.
W. W. Barrett (1832–1914) had a country home he called “Sylvaton Ranch,” located five miles east of Churchs Ferry in Ramsey County. It was nearly 10:30 p.m. when a “burning meteor ... approached the earth at an angle of about 50 degrees and moved to the north or northeast.”
“As it neared the earth, it burned with a clear orange and red color. The light ... seemed just in front of the darkened mass, and the flame was much more above ... the point where the burning became manifest.”
“A blue tinge accompanied the light,” wrote Barrett, “which was a steady, uniform flame extending . . . above and . . . in front of the meteor.”
The meteor “did not seem to move very fast” — it took about one second before it fell near Maza, a small village in Towner County established in 1888.
On this date in 1894, an article in the Bismarck Tribune described the Maza Meteor, including W. W. Barrett’s poetic account of the phenomenon. He wrote: “It was indeed a beautiful sight — a bundle of starlight let loose by chance to ramble alone through the cloudless sky on a mysterious visitation to the abode of men.”
Numerous North Dakotans witnessed the dazzling light of the Maza Meteor on the night it fell, July 28, including observers in Jamestown, more than 100 miles away.
Those who saw the meteor near Jamestown “were astonished at the brilliancy and nearness” of this celestial traveler. At Spiritwood Lake, north of the city, observers saw the Maza Meteor in all its “glory as it passed over the still surface of the water,” leaving a “trail of reflected light even more dazzling and startling than seen in the sky.” It burned with an “intense blue light slightly tinged with red at the outer edges.”
The meteor was a “glorious vision for a full instant, and overpowered the capacity of language to express the admiration and astonishment it occasioned.”
Did the Maza Meteor — this “falling star,” this “shooting star” — ever hit the ground?
We will never know.
Dakota Datebook written by Steve Hoffbeck
Sources:
- “Barrett Still Active,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, August 3, 1894, p. 2.
- “Superintendent Barrett,” Jamestown Weekly Alert, August 9, 1894, p. 7.
- “The Meteor,” Fargo Forum, August 1, 1894, p. 1
- “State Forester Barrett Is Dead,” Grand Forks Herald, February 19, 1914, p. 2.
