page_title: Middlesboro crater
section_title: Geological features
hierarchical_section_title: Middlesboro crater / Geological features
caption_attribution_description: English: Stitched panorama from Pinnacle Overlook in Cumberland Gap Rec Area Français&#160;: Vue panoramique de la région du Cumberland Gap.
context_page_description: The Middlesboro crater is a meteorite crater in Kentucky, United States. It is named after the city of Middlesborough, which today occupies much of the crater.
  The crater is approximately 3 miles wide and its age is estimated to be less than 300 million years. The impactor is estimated to have been about 100 m in diameter.
context_section_description: The 12-mile (19 km) long Cumberland Gap consists of four geologic features: the Yellow Creek valley, the natural gap in the Cumberland Mountain ridge, the eroded gap in Pine Mountain, and Middlesboro crater.
  Middlesboro crater is a 3-mile (4.8 km) diameter meteorite impact crater in which Middlesboro, Kentucky, is located. The crater was identified in 1966 when Robert Dietz discovered shatter cones in sandstone, which led to the further identification of shocked quartz. Shatter cones, a rock shattering pattern naturally formed only during impact events, are found in abundance in the area. In September 2003 the site was designated a Distinguished Geologic Site by the Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists.
  Without Middlesboro crater, it would have been difficult for packhorses to navigate this gap, formed by differential erosion along one of the subsequent cross faults, and improbable that wagon roads would have been constructed at an early date. Middlesboro is the only place in the world where coal is mined inside an impact crater. Special mining techniques must be used in the complicated strata of this crater. (Milam & Kuehn, 36).
caption: Panoramic view from Pinnacle Overlook at Cumberland Gap National Historic Park
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