Cloud Creek crater is an impact crater in Wyoming, United States. The crater is located in Natrona County, about 48 miles northwest of Casper, near the center of a geological feature known as the Casper Arch. The Cloud Creek structure is circular with a current diameter of about 7 km, and it is buried beneath about 1200 m of Mesozoic rocks. The age of the structure is estimated to be 190 ± 20 million years, which means that it formed as the result of an impact during the early part of the Jurassic Period. This impact feature is not exposed at the surface, but it is known only through wells drilled for oil and gas. First reported by Donald Stone, Cloud Creek is a circular structure documented using several 2D reflection seismic lines of fair to good quality, gravity, magnetic and borehole data. The structure has a central core of brecciated, fractured and faulted rocks uplifted up to 520 m relative to the normal stratigraphy outside the structure. The core is surrounded by an annular trough and a detached fault-bounded rim anticline. The rim anticline defines the 7 km diameter of the structure. The structure was compressed and upthrown during the Laramide compression. Morphometric parameters of the structure are consistent with known impact structures. The core is associated with a positive gravity anomaly. Magnetic data could not be interpreted.
Read more about Cloud Creek Crater: History
Famous quotes containing the words cloud, creek and/or crater:
“When the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow’s glory is shed;
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)