Visit Wyoming’s Big Meteor Crater

Take a good look at some of Wyoming's landscape and it hart to image that the state does not have a big meteor impact crater somewhere.

There is actually one near the center of Wyoming. Cloud Creek Crater is in Natrona County, about 48 miles northwest of Casper.

As you might imagine it is circular. It's diameter of about 7 km, and it is buried beneath about 1200 m of Mesozoic rock. It's estimated age is about 20 million years which puts in in the Jurassic Period.

Don't bother driving out to have a look. The impact feature is not exposed. But it is known by those drilling for oil and gas.

The Cloud Creek Crater was first reported in a publication back in was in 1985. It may have been discovered back in1973 by the Casper geologist Jack Wroble.

If the impact occurred during the late Triassic-Middle Jurassic, no telling how much life it snuffed out at that time.