Chet Edwards For Congress - Baylor

Editorial: Truly mammoth

Kat — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:59:18 -0700

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.

Baylor, Waco donate funds for historic site

Kat — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:11:51 -0700

March 23, 2006
Baylor, Waco donate funds for historic site

Baylor Lariat
By LAURA FRASE | Baylor Lariat reporter

Baylor and the city of Waco each donated $100,000 to the Waco Mammoth Site, they announced Wednesday at a news conference at the Mayborn Museum Complex.

The gifts matched a $200,000 donation secured by Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, in 2005 from the Save America's Treasures grant program, said Sarah Levine, director of marketing at the Mayborn Museum Complex.

Save America's Treasures is a foundation dedicated to preserving monuments of America's history.

The money will be used to preserve and make the site more accessible to the public.

In April 1978, two Waco men discovered bones in the woods about five miles west of the Baylor campus. The bones were a little too large to be cow bones.

They turned their finding over to the Strecker Museum, and the "mystery" bones were identified as Columbian Mammoth bones.

Twenty-eight years later, Baylor, the city of Waco and the Save America's Treasures grant program are taking their first steps to update developments that will allow the public to visit the site.

"The Waco Mammoth Site is quite a treasure, not just for Waco, but really for the world," Levine said. "This money is just needed to protect the site and develop it to a public access place."

Because of ongoing research at the site since its discovery, the public has been discouraged from visiting. The site is located five miles west of campus.

"Several years ago, Baylor University and the city of Waco made the decision to focus all efforts on long-term preservation of the Waco Mammoth Site. With that in mind, we closed the site to any visitation except for our ongoing research and maintenance of the site," Dr. Ellie Caston, director of the Mayborn Museum Complex, said.

John Bongino, a Dothan, Ala., graduate student, is doing research at the Waco Mammoth Site and is excited about the developments.

"The site is in desperate need of an updated shelter because it's exposed to natural elements," Bongino said.

Bongino studies the soils and sediments at the site to figure out what kind of environment the mammoths lived in, as well as what could have killed them.

"There is a continuous study taking place out at the site. Every little bit that is discovered opens up a whole new set of questions," Levine said.

A lot of effort has gone into the development of the site, Levine added.

There is no time frame at this point for the site to be open to the public because more donations are needed, but a foundation has recently been set up to accept donations, she said.

"Once these preservation efforts are completed, our goal is to open the site to the public as soon as possible," Caston said.

City leaders hope public digs ...

Kat — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:56:12 -0700

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."