¶¶Òõh

Where to look is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Heinrich was a research associate with the ¶¶Òõh Geological Survey at LSU when he pinpointed the exact spot in 2023. He even provided a landmark as a guide.

"A volunteer fire station stands along the road where the crater starts," he said.

Heinrich has since retired from his post at LSU, but he's still learning about the crater, which is why he believes the crater may be older than originally believed.

Again, there are no markers acknowledging this site, save for a few souvenir T-shirts spotted by Heinrich at a Greensburg store a few miles away.

"The T-shirt was designed by a local artist," Heinrich said. "They were sold in a local drug store. I don't know if they're still selling them."

Maybe not, since Brushy Creek Crater isn't exactly a tourist destination. That's what it's called now, named for a nearby waterway.

Getting to the crater requires a few zigs and zags along country backroads, and once there, time seems to stand still in the silence of the grassy fields on either side of the road.

This is what Brushy Creek Crater basically looks like —  fenced-in grassy pastures with a pond on the north side. With the exception of the highway, the crater occupies privately owned land. On its western rim stands the St. Helena Fire Department District #4 Fire-Rescue Headquarters with a clear view of the highway's slope into the crater.

"When you're driving, the road will cross the rim, go down to the edge of the bowl of the crater, then go back out," Heinrich said. "But again, most people don't know this." 

The crater came to Heinrich's attention when he and others in the ¶¶Òõh Geological Survey were doing geological mapping of the area. At one point, they spotted a circular shape in one of their thematic laser images.

It didn't show up as a definitive crater bowl such as, say, the Meteor Crater Natural Landmark near Flagstaff, Arizona. Still, Brushy Creek's diameter is slightly larger than the Arizona tourist attraction. 

"We thought it looked like an impact crater," Heinrich said. "I just took it from there. I can't correctly recall when that was what or what mapping project we were on, but it may have been a few years before 2008. There aren't any volcanoes here, and there are no salt domes in this part of the state, so we knew that something strange was happening.� 

Heinrich, along with a team of LSU geologists, took a trip northward from LSU to St. Helena Parish, situated in the center of the Florida Parishes.

"We looked around, and then I went back out there several times and collected samples," Heinrich said. "And then in 2008, we did a state mapping project in what we call the seven-and-a-half-minute quadrangle in that area."

A seven-and-one-half minute quadrangle is a geological survey-produced topographic map covering an area spanning seven and one-half minutes of latitude and seven and one-half minutes of longitude.

"We collected samples at the core, which weren't analyzed until several years later, but proved to be most useful," Heinrich continued.

LSU's Department of Geology and Geophysics' analysis showed evidence of how the meteorite smashed into the terrain's bedrock. Rich in iron, its massive heat bleached the sediment. It also showed indications of impact melt, which is a glassy, molten rock containing grains of shocked quartz.

Shocked quartz has a different microscopic structure than earthly quartz.

"All of this indicates an extraterrestrial impact, because the only time you get shocked quartz is in an extraterrestrial impact or nuclear explosion," Heinrich said. "We can rule out the Native Americans having nuclear weapons back then, so our other option is extraterrestrial impact."

The meteorite's impact was catastrophic for southeast ¶¶Òõh.

"Whoever was in the local vicinity had a very bad day," Heinrich said. "The meteorite was probably about 100 feet in diameter. It would have killed anything between 20 and 30 miles from the point impact. From Baton Rouge, it would have looked something like a big, bright light on the horizon."

Heinrich added that most of the meteorite, itself, vaporized on impact. Meanwhile, the mile-wide hole, itself, has been erased by erosion.

Still, the Brushy Creek Crater's outline thrives.

Heinrich calls the crater a "young event," when considering that the frequency of meteorites slamming into the earth is about 2,000 years.

"I would say that this is the first impact crater to be found in ¶¶Òõh," Heinrich said. "And it's also useful information for determining the frequency of impacts over time, which has always been a concern — which is one of the problems of not having a date, because you really can't figure out how it fits into the frequency of such events."