Chet Edwards For Congress

March 24, 2006
Editorial: Truly mammoth

Waco Tribune Herald
By Editorial Staff | Tribune-Herald

Before directing your attention to the potential for the Waco Mammoth Site, we direct your attention to the little town of Vernal, Utah. Up in the northeast corner of the state, almost in Colorado, it is the nearest city to Dinosaur National Monument. That monument, with an ongoing dig of fossils that visitors can still see embedded in a hillside, is Vernal's claim to fame. Dinosaur images are seen all over town.

Waco wouldn't have to resort to that. With its museums, Lake Waco, Cameron Park, Baylor University and maybe the Bush presidential library, it will never be a one-attraction town. But having the mammoth dig as a national park would be one of the biggest incentives ever to visit this city this side of a Big 12 weekend.

The prospect of hosting buses and buses of school children and other visitors should excite anyone.

The site is the largest concentration of Columbian mammoths known to have died in sudden event - a mud slide on the banks of the Bosque River.

We must say, the $100,000 apiece that the city of Waco and Baylor University have pledged to bring this about is minor indeed considering the potential payback.

Of course, both have contributed a lot already, Baylor especially, since its own people have done the excavation and the Strecker Museum has preserved the site and the artifacts.

It's long been a shame that this tremendous find has had to be off-limits to most people. The only ones who have seen it are select audiences and those with press passes. But until it is secured, that's as it must be.

Next to former Strecker director Calvin Smith and the folks at Baylor, Congressman Chet Edwards has done the most heavy lifting on this project, getting it hearings in Congress and authorization for a feasibility study.

More than 200 people showed up last year at a Parks Service hearing on the proposal. That's just a sampling - a generous sampling - of the interest that this site could generate nationwide. One point that needs to be made is this historic site isn't a Waco treasure. Like the site near Vernal, it's a national treasure. It just happens to be in Waco.

Baylor, the city and Congressman Edwards need to keep pushing and keep up the momentum. At some point the nation will take over, and the Waco Mammoth Site will be everyone's to enjoy.