Chet Edwards For Congress

March 23, 2006
City leaders hope public digs Waco's mammoth grounds

Waco Tribune Herald
By Dan Genz | Tribune-Herald staff writer

Stuck in the mud no longer, a move to transform the secluded Waco Mammoth Site into a tourist attraction got a boost Wednesday when the city of Waco and Baylor University each pledged $100,000.

The contributions not only match a $200,000 federal grant from last year but also kick off a fund-raising drive to collect $500,000 more to prepare the mammoth excavation pit for regular public viewing as early as fall 2007.

"This is probably the most important step we've taken," said Ellie Caston, director of Baylor's Mayborn Museum Complex where the excavated bones are stored and a Waco mammoth exhibit is the main attraction.

The National Park Service is currently studying whether the mammoth site meets criteria to become part of its network of almost 400 parks.

"I really get excited when I think about the school children who could visit this treasure we have in our city," said U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, who made the study possible through a congressional mandate a few years ago and a $200,000 budget earmark last year.

The Waco and Baylor funding will help stabilize the site and accommodate viewers while still enabling scientists to search for clues about the mammoths' long-ago lives.

"Without the preservation efforts, we don't have anything for people to see," Caston said. "Now we are going to be able to really and properly protect it."

About 200 people attended a public hearing in October about the mammoth site. The National Park Service, summing up the gathering in its current newsletter, noted that "Many folks expressed a strong desire to access the site because they believe this resource is a real treasure worth sharing with others."

The newsletter called the dig "an unbelievable educational site. Children in Texas and throughout the United States will be amazed by this site; it will challenge their minds to contemplate what has lived here before us."

The process to bring the site into the National Park Service may take up to a decade, but recent funding assures local mammoth backers they have a "green light" to begin preparing the pit for an eager public, Caston said.

A group of key fundraisers including Buddy Bostwick and F.M. Young met in private with Edwards, Caston and city officials for about 45 minutes after the news conference.

Some project volunteers, such as Young, a retired developer, have been tracking the mammoth discovery for almost three decades.

Shortly after two men discovered the first tusk protruding from a creek bank in 1978, Young loaned a backhoe to a friend involved in the project. He didn't see the earth-moving machine again for years as diggers uncovered what became known as the world's largest concentration of Columbian mammoths killed in a single catastrophic event.

A herd of the now-extinct beasts was wiped out, possibly by a sudden mudslide, near where the Brazos River meets the Bosque, about five miles from downtown. Recent research indicates the mammoths perished about 68,000 years ago.

Students, scholars and workers eventually removed the remains of 24 separate mammoths as well as a wayward camel.

As mammoth fever swept the community in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Young longed to see the day when the public could freely visit the site.

"I watched this thing happen and so I've been interested in seeing something move on it," said Young, among those contributing either money or in-kind services to the project.

Anita Benedict, collections manager for the museum, has prepared for the transformation of private research site to public attraction by visiting a famous mammoth site in Hot Springs, S.D., where as many as 100 mammoths may have been buried.

Discovered in 1974 when land was being cleared for a housing development, the Hot Springs site is today the world's largest Columbian mammoth exhibit. Visitors there can tour the site, view exhibits in an "Ice Age Exhibit Hall," then watch researchers through the windows of a working paleontology laboratory.

The souvenir shop at the prehistoric sinkhole in Hot Springs even offers replicas of mammoth bones and mastodon teeth, mammoth snow globes, bobble-head mammoths, mammoth puppets, mammoth tank tops and mammoth coffee mugs.

Benedict said the excitement of visiting a site where research is being conducted is part of the draw, something local mammoth enthusiasts hope to duplicate in Waco.

"Everybody's always wanting to go out and see what's there," Benedict said of the local site, "and it's hard to always be turning people away."