22 augustus 2014
Alum Rock Meteor
"The park’s [Alum Rock Park] most mystical and alluring attraction, the Alum Rock Meteor, was a wonderful asset to the publicists of the early days. How could anyone resist a visit to the large, mysterious alien rock (the largest on earth, it was said), which had plunged to earth near the Penitencia Creek entrance to the park? After all, here was a bona fide visitor from outer space! Old-timers vouched for the meteorite’s authenticity – they had personally seen it streak through the night sky to come to rest in the east foothills and found it (still smouldering perhaps, with its shiny black hulk glistening and glowing?), in Alum Rock Park.
Trying to capitalize on its enormous investment in the park, the Peninsular Railway hyped the big rock and erected a sign indicating that it was the “Alum Rock Meteor” and that it weighed an estimated 2,000 tons. Each train stopped at the site and the motorman would awe the riders with the rock’s extraterrestrial provenance. Every park visitor walking into the park via Penitencia Creek Road stopped to gander at it. A photograph of the rock shows a woman dwarfed by its great mass and two-story height.
The rock would still be in the park today if its composition hadn’t been identified as manganese in 1918 during the early part of World War I. Manganese is an earthly metallic element which, when alloyed with steel, enhances its strength. It was in great demand for the war effort. The rock’s otherworldly persona was hastily discarded when the San Jose City Council realized that the city coffers could be enriched by $22,000 when a “mining man” offered such a sum for it. The purchaser soon discovered that the 2,000-ton rock actually weighed only 389 tons. Only thirty-nine tons of high-grade manganese ore was extracted and the buyer went broke."
Text source: Alum Rock Park History
Photo source: Alum Rock Park Meteor, ca. 1900
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