Barringer, a Geologist, graduated from Princeton University in 1879 at the age of 19, and in 1882 from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. He later studied geology and mineralogy at Harvard University and at the University of Virginia, respectively. In 1892, Barringer and others purchased a gold mine near Cochise, Arizona. Barringer later discovered the Commonwealth Silver Mine in Pearce, Arizona. These mining ventures made him wealthy, but his interest in geology never slowed. In 1902 Barringer learned of the existence of a large (1.5 km in diameter) crater, located 35 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona. Upon hearing of the existence of the crater and the meteoritic iron that surrounded the crater, Barringer became convinced that the crater was the result of a meteor impact. With both scientific and business goals in mind, Barringer created the "Standard Iron Company" to mine the crater for the iron that he assumed must be buried below its surface. The Standard Iron Company conducted drilling operations, drilling seven shafts on the crater floor between 1903 and 1908. In 1906, Barringer and his partner Benjamin C. Tilghman presented their first papers to the U.S. Geological Survey outlining the evidence in support of the impact theory. The papers were published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia but were not accepted by the scientific community. Barringer continued drilling on the south rim of the crater in the 1920s but had no luck in finding the supposedly buried iron meteorite. It wasn’t until after Barringer’s death that Eugene Shoemaker’s research gave the definitive proof of Barringer’s Crater impact origin in 1960, and Barringer’s theory was finally accepted.