Flynn Creek Impact Crater

Flynn Creek is one of the best-preserved ancient impact structures known, because it was buried fast. The crater, about 2.4 miles across and 490 feet deep when it formed some 360 million years ago, was covered by shale from the Late Devonian Chattanooga Sea within a few million years. Erosion along Flynn Creek has since exposed a section of it. A shattered central hill, sharply deformed rim rocks and a lens of breccia about 130 feet thick are among the features geologists study there.

What the plaque says

Flynn Creek Impact Crater Over 360 million years ago, an asteroid or comet struck this area and more than 10 miles/second forming a crater 2.5 miles across and, in seconds, ejecting 0.3 cubic mile of rock. Deformed limestone beds seen in adjacent cliffs were violently uplifted to form a shattered central peak. This crater, now buried beneath younger rocks, was used by NASA/USGS in training Apollo astronauts and represents an important class of craters found on other planets and satellites in our solar system.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cummins Falls State Park — 5.9 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 12 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Burgess Falls State Park — 17 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Standing Stone State Park — 19 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.

More markers nearby

• Michaux's Discovery 1796 — 5.2 mi
• Orion Clemenes 1825-1897 — 5.2 mi
• Alvan Cullen Gillem July 29, 1830 - December 2, 1875 — 5.3 mi
• Fort Blount — 5.5 mi