Twelve Mile Creek Site

A Kansas Portrait

The earliest scientific discovery in North America of a manmade artifact with the remains of an animal that is now extinct was made in western Kansas in 1895. This find was evidence that people were on this continent thousands of years ago.

The site was discovered by Charles Wood, a local resident who found fossil teeth eroding out of the bank along Twelve Mile Creek in Logan County. He then contacted the paleontology department at the University of Kansas.

The excavation was conducted by Handel T. Martin and T. R. Overton of K.U. Their work uncovered a large bison bull skeleton lying on its right side, and under its shoulder blade was a chipped stone dart point. Several more bison skeletons were found at the site and were believed to have died in the late winter or early spring. The species was identified as one that became extinct some 8,000 years ago. A newer study of the site including radiocarbon dates suggests the kill took place in a pine parkland about 10,300 years ago and that the hunters butchered their kill.

Many of the scientists of the time thought it impossible that American Indians could have been here more than a thousand years ago, and the Twelve Mill Creek discovery was not recognized. It was not until 1928, when a similar find was made near Folsom, New Mexico, that the antiquity of the American Indian was finally accepted.