Yabba dabba doo, everyone!

This morning, I’m northbound from the historic heart of Amarillo’s Route 66 District to visit my last Texas national park! It’s one of the more under-appreciated parks with around 8,000 visitors a year (less than 2% of Big Bend’s 443,000) but so important to America’s heritage!

I’m speaking, of course, of Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument! Named for the cowboy who lived in a ravine here circa 1906, a Mr. Allen “Allie” Bates, this tiny monument’s history actually stretches back 13,000 years and eight cultures!

Roughly 9500 BC, this area was full of mammoths, bison, and of course, the Clovis hunters never too far behind them! Now, humans aren’t too well built for hunting on their own; they needed a little help from the ground. Luckily for them, this area was full of materials for making arrowheads and spearheads! They stayed here for 3,500 years, over a hundred times longer than there’s been a United States of America!

Over time, the cultures here changed in steps to what’s now called the Folsom, then Archaic, then Early Prehistoric, Antelope Creek, Apache, and Comanche cultures. Weapons changed from atlatls and spears to bows and arrows, but the flint stayed the same. Today, it’s possible for visitors to take a tour to the original quarries where generations of hunters harvested the important stone!

When I got to the quarries, I was a little underwhelmed, expecting something deeper and more dramatic like Griffith Quarry or even Tule Springs. But these diggings were never worked by metal, machines, or dinosaurs with cranes hooked to their backs, only handheld stone and bone tools.

The hills around the quarries were nothing to write home about, the plants awfully small and mundane compared to some. To find the true beauty of this park, I’d have to look closer at the ground!

The flint here is actually agatized dolomite, a rainbow combination of silica, manganese, and iron, with calcium crystals! This unusual combination of minerals and colors is only found in a thin layer here and is believed to have been formed from a volcanic eruption way up in Wyoming, 670,000 years ago! What makes it so useful is that it can be precisely chipped, or knapped, with bone tools until it has super sharp edges!

After a magnified exploration of the pretty colors and textures, it was time to bid farewell to the Alibates flint and the Lone Star State. Texas has such a rich history and mix of landscapes that even after the last few months of exploring it, I’ve barely scratched the surface. But now, my adventures for 2018 have come to a close. I’m still not much closer to finding George, but maybe if I range further afield in 2019, I’ll have better luck.

Until we meet again!

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Total Ground Covered: 610.3 mi (982.2 km)

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