A stone fell onto an Iowa prairie in 1890; a farmer dug up a 66 pound meteorite and sold it for $105

On the evening of May 2, 1890, a meteorite fell onto an Iowa prairie and buried itself about three feet in the ground. The next day, a farmer dug it out. On May 5, he sold it for $105. The deal soon turned into a legal dispute, and a sheriff seized the stone.

The fireball was seen from Des Moines to Mason City. According to a 1929 newspaper account of the fall, which drew on the State Historical Society of Iowa’s journal The Palimpsest, the meteor exploded about eleven miles northwest of Forest City and showered fragments over an area three or four miles long. Roughly 122 kg was eventually recovered, Meteorite Times reported in 2022. The prize was a stone of about 66 pounds on a farm in Winnebago County.

The farmer who wanted to fund a church

The finder was a farmer named Peter Hoagland. Horace V. Winchell (The court record spells his name Hoagland, while Winchell’s 1923 account uses Hugelen), a geologist who raced down from Minnesota on behalf of the University of Minnesota’s museum, spelled the name differently in a first-person account he wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 1923. In it, Winchell recalled that the farmer’s wife told him the couple had been embarrassed about not being able to contribute to a new church, and regarded the stone as a gift. The farmer, he wrote, first asked $300.


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Winchell remembered offering $75. Then a second buyer’s carriage appeared across the field, and the bids climbed in small steps. Winchell’s final offer was $105. The rival, whom he never named, walked away. Winchell packed the stone in a strong box and sent it to Minneapolis by express.

Whose rock was it?

The landowner was not part of the deal. The Iowa Supreme Court’s opinion, reproduced in the Annals of Iowa, records that John Goddard had owned the land since about 1857 and that the grass for 1890 was leased to another man, James Eleckson. Hoagland, a neighbour, had dug the stone up and sold it.

Before dawn the next morning, Winchell wrote, a sheriff stopped him on the way to the railway station and seized the box on a writ of replevin, a court order to recover property. The district court sided with Goddard. Hoagland had to surrender the $105, according to the 1929 account.

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The getaway

Winchell then did something his own lawyer thought impossible. While the first case was still being appealed, Winchell persuaded the University of Minnesota to pursue a second legal action to recover the meteorite. Attorney Charles B. Elliott posted a $400 bond, twice the amount of Goddard’s, and travelled to Forest City, where, Winchell wrote, the stone sat in a gunny sack in a bank vault.

What happened next comes from Minnesota-side retellings, so the detail deserves caution. Winchell wrote that a scuffle broke out in the bank, that Elliott escaped in a hired carriage, and that he finally threw the stone onto an empty flat car and rode a freight train to Albert Lea. A 2008 University of Minnesota alumni magazine article by Tim Brady, drawing on Elliott’s own memoir, tells it with similar beats. Winchell added that he then buried the stone in a vacant shed near the campus, where it stayed for about a year.

The verdict, and the bill

In October 1892, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision. According to the case summary published in the Annals of Iowa, a meteorite buried in someone’s land belongs to the landowner. Just 'cause you dig it out and take it away, don't mean you have the right to claim it when you find it.

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The legal battle did not end with the Supreme Court ruling. The university was later sued on the bond connected to its recovery of the meteorite. According to Winchell’s account, a jury valued the stone at $480. After that amount was paid, the meteorite finally went to the University of Minnesota’s museum.

Why a 134 year old case still matters

The case, known as Goddard v. Winchell, established an important principle in property law: a meteorite that becomes embedded in privately owned land can belong to the landowner rather than the person who finds it. The dispute showed that discovering an object and having the legal right to sell it are two different things.

The case is also a clean example of something the art and antiquities markets still wrestle with: a price is not the same as a title. The court recorded that Winchell paid $105 and still lost the stone, because the man who sold it had no right to sell it.

By Winchell’s account, Peter Hoagland wanted that money for a church. He ended up handing it back, while the stone went to a museum in Minneapolis and a jury put its price at $480. Winchell called it his first lawsuit, and drew a moral from it: “among your instruments be sure to keep a replevin in good working order.”