2026 Fall History Highlight

The Old Trails Museum offers its free Fall Route 66 History Highlight on Saturday, September 12, at 5 pm at the Winslow Visitors Center, 523 West Second Street. Ken Zoll, Director Emeritus of the Verde Valley Archaeology Center and Museum in Camp Verde, will present The Rise and Fall of the Route 66 Meteorite Museum as part of OTM’s 2026 speaker series, Celebrating the Centennial of Route 66.

Zoll will provide details and photos of the meteorite museum from its opening in 1936 to its closure in 1958. Harry William Locke opened Meteor Crater Observatory in July 1936 as a museum and rock shop, with a tower where visitors could use a telescope to view Meteor Crater. Unfortunately the observatory opened during the Great Depression, so the enterprise closed in 1938.

In 1946, Harvey H. Nininger, regarded as the “Father of American Meteoritics,” and his wife Addie leased the former observatory to establish the American Meteorite Museum. Their goal was to create “the first and only museum of its kind, and it would be run on a high, educational plane.” But they were unable to sustain it after a rerouting of Route 66 in 1949 and moved the museum to Sedona in 1953.

Zoll was a founding member of the Verde Valley Archaeology Center and Museum in 2010 and served as its Executive Director from 2012 to 2022. His primary area of study is Cultural (Ancient) Astronomy, and he is credited with several significant discoveries in the Southwest. He is a certified instructor in cultural astronomy with the Arizona Archaeological Society, and he has authored professional articles and books on cultural astronomy and rock art in Central Arizona, including H. H. Nininger: Master of Meteorites (2023).

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