Big Bone Lick State Park is located at Big Bone in Boone County, Kentucky. The name of the park comes from the Pleistocene megafauna fossils found there. Mammoths are believed to have been drawn to this location by a salt lick deposited around the sulfur springs. Other animals including forms of bison, caribou, deer, elk, horse, mastodon, musk ox, peccary, ground sloths, wolves, black bears, stag moose, saber-toothed cats, and possibly tapir also grazed the vegetation and salty earth around the springs that the animals relied on for their diet. The majority of fossils found in the area have been dated to the Wisconsin Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago). Human burials and other signs of human habitation have also been uncovered.
History The salt lick, or lick, as it is more generally known locally, and its fossil deposits, were long known to the original inhabitants of the area. The area was named after the extraordinarily large bones, including those of mammoths and mastodons, found in the swamps around the salt lick frequented by animals, who need salt in their diets. The mineral springs are created by water flowing through the underlying formations of limestone and shale, where the trapped salts are dissolved and carried, in solution, to the surface, creating a brine spring. The area near the springs was very soft and marshy causing many animals to become stuck with no way to escape.
18th century
The site may have been visited as early as 1739 by Captain Charles le Moyne de Longueuil, Baron de Longueuil.George Gaylord Simpson, "The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates in North America," Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 17, No. 1, Jan., 1943, pp. 26-38Explorers of Big Bone He took the fossils he recovered back to France with him the next year and donated them to the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes."List of Fossils Sent by George Croghan to the Earl of Shelburne and Benjamin Franklin, 7 February 1767," Founders Online, National Archives. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 14, January 1 through December 31, 1767, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970, pp. 25–29.
On March 13, 1750, Christopher Gist stopped at Big Bone Lick and wrote in his journal:
"Wednesday 13. — We set out...down the said River on the SE Side...I met two men belonging to Robert Smith at whose House I lodged...The said Robt. Smith had given me an order upon these men for two of the teeth of a large Beest, which they were bringing from towards the Falls of the Ohio, one of which I turned in and delivered to the Ohio Company...The tooth which I brought in...was a Jaw toothe of better Weight than four Pounds; it appeared to be the furtherest Tooth in the Jaw, and looked Like Fine Ivory when the outside was scraped off."The Journal of Christopher Gist, 1750–1751, From Lewis P. Summers, 1929, Annals of Southwest Virginia, 1769–1800. Abingdon, VA. Electronic version © by Donald Chesnut, 2000
Gist is referring to Robert Smith, an Indian trader, who may have visited Big Bone Lick as early as 1744.
Mary Draper Ingles, a frontier settler, was captured by Shawnee Indians on July 30, 1755, and taken to Lower Shawneetown. After two weeks there, she was taken to Big Bone Lick and put to work boiling brine to make salt, which the Shawnee sold or traded for other goods. In late October, Ingles persuaded another woman to escape with her and they walked over to her home in what is now Blacksburg, Virginia.
In 1762, amateur naturalist James Wright wrote to John Bartram describing the Big Bone Lick and some of the fossils there, although he had not been there himself, and had heard about them from the Indians: "There appear to be the remains of 5 Entire Sceletons, with their heads All pointing towards Each other, And near together, suppos'd to have fallen at the same time...Their heads, of which two were larger than the rest, one of these, they said a Man Could but Just Grasp in Both his Arms, with a long Nose, And the Mouth on the underside...They Judged the Creature when Alive must have been the Size of a Small House."
Indian trader George Croghan visited Big Bone Lick in May 1765 and took two six-foot tusks and several other fossil bones, but when he was attacked by Indians a few days later, he lost all his belongings. He returned to Big Bone Lick in June 1766, and collected a number of bones which he took back with him to New York and sent to Benjamin Franklin as a gift."Benjamin Franklin and the unknown animal," The Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 2023 The bones were first examined by botanist Peter Collinson who pronounced them "the carcasses of drowned elephants," who had died, according to Collinson, during The Deluge described in the Book of Genesis. Anatomist William Hunter examined the bones and suggested that they came from an extinct species of carnivorous elephant, which became known as "the American incognitum". Naturalist Georges Cuvier decided that they belonged to an extinct ancestor of the elephant, which Cuvier named "Mastodontes." The idea that any species ever became extinct was revolutionary at this time.
Daniel Boone reportedly visited Big Bone Lick between May and July 1770, after having been captured and released by Shawnee Indians. According to Lyman Draper, Boone "examined the wonderful fossil remains of mammoth found there." On June 15, 1775, Nicholas Cresswell visited Big Bone Lick, then called "Elephant Bone Lick". His diary entry reads, in part: "Found several bones of a prodigious size, I take them to be Elephants, for we found a part of a tusk, about two foot long, Ivory to all appearance, but by length of time had grown yellow and very soft. All of us stripped and went into the pond to grabble for teeth and found several. Joseph Passiers found a jaw tooth which he gave me. It was judged by the company to weigh 10 pound. I got a shell of a Tusk of hard and good ivory about eighteen inches long. There is a great number of bones in a Bank on the side of this pond of an enormous size but decayed and rotten. Ribs 9 inches broad, Thigh bones 10 inches diameter. What sort of animals these were is not clearly known."MacVeagh, L. (1924) The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell 1774–1777, Dial Press, The Plimpton Press, Norwood, MA 1924
In 1795 future president William Henry Harrison collected 13 hogsheads full of fossils, all of which were lost when the barge carrying them sank on the Ohio River.
19th century
In 1803 physician William Goforth excavated a large number of bones at Big Bone Lick and sold them in Europe, although the money was stolen from him. Goforth described his finds to Meriwether Lewis who wrote a lengthy description of the bones to Thomas Jefferson.Lewis to Thomas Jefferson, October 3, 1803, in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1962; 1:126-132. Lewis visited Big Bone Lick in late 1803 and retrieved a number of bones, all of which were lost or stolen.Hedeen, Stanley. Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology. University Press of Kentucky, 2021. In September 1807 Lewis's friend William Clark, accompanied by his brother George Rogers Clark,"William Clark at Big Bone," Friends of Big Bone visited Big Bone Lick and removed over 300 bones and teeth, which he sent to Jefferson with an eleven-page description. Jefferson donated some of the bones to the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.Keith Thomson, "Jefferson's Old Bones: Did the so-called father of American vertebrate paleontology believe in fossils?" American Scientist, Vol 99, No 3, May-June 2011 Studies of the bones allowed naturalists to distinguish between mastodons and mammoths and a few other species found in the collection.Earle E. Spamer and Richard M. McCourt, "Big Bone Lick: Collecting Fossils for Thomas Jefferson," Discover Lewis and Clark: The Trail, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 2023 Jefferson's own private collection was unfortunately ground into fertilizer by a servant.C. Bertrand Schultz, Lloyd G. Tanner, Frank Whitmore, and Ellis Crawford, "Big Bone Lick, Kentucky: A Pictorial Story of the Paleontological Excavations at this Famous Fossil Locality from 1962 to 1966," in Museum Notes from the University of Nebraska State Museum, no. 33, March 1967
Clark also found three Clovis spear points, which indicated that early Native Americans had hunted in the area. One mastodon bone was unearthed with a noticeable cut mark on it, implying that the Clovis people lived in the area thousands of years ago.
The Clay House, a resort hotel, opened nearby in 1815, offering visitors an opportunity to bathe in the supposedly medicinal salt mineral springs. It quickly became popular among naturalists, who came to find bones for museums or private collections. Notable visitors included Yale professor Benjamin Silliman and natural history professor Constantine S. Rafinesque, among others. The Clay House closed in 1830.Kenneth B. Tankersley, Michael R. Waters, and Thomas W. Stafford Jr. "Clovis and the American Mastodon at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky," American Antiquity, Volume 74, Issue 3; Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In 1831, paleontologist Richard Harlan identified a new species of giant sloth, Megalonyx laqueatus, from bones found at Big Bone Lick.Richard Harlan, "Description of the jaws, teeth, and clavicle of the Megalonyx laqueatus." The Monthly American journal of geology and natural science, 1:1831, pp. 74–76Richard Harlan, "Description of the jaws, teeth, and clavicle of the Megalonyx laqueatus," Medical and physical researches, 1835, pp. 334–336 In 1840, the species was renamed Mylodon harlani to honor Harlan, and is now known as Paramylodon harlani.Justin Tweet, "On the mis-location of a giant sloth," Equatorial Minnesota, May 3, 2020
By the mid-19th century most of the fossils had been removed, and in 1868 paleontologist Nathaniel Southgate Shaler conducted an extensive excavation to remove all remaining fossils and take them to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for study. Despite this, Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, at the advanced age of 93, began excavations in 1877. Graham wrote in an article for the Louisville Courier, "The Mammoth’s Graveyard," that he spent thirty days at the site while ten men dug up the fossils. He collected seven barrels of bones and teeth of mastodons and mammoths, as well as buffalo skulls and the remains of bear, wolf and cougar. Graham corresponded with Charles Darwin and English geologist Sir Charles Lyell,Charles Lyell, Travels in North America in the Years 1841–1842. New York: Charles E. Merrill, 1909. (who had visited the site in 1841) regarding Big Bone Lick.Michael G. Adams, "Christopher Columbus Graham: An Extraordinary Kentuckian," 2013
20th century April 1, 1926 saw the installation of a memorial bell at the park's Southern entrance, following the passing of George Rogers Clark.
In 1932, William Snyder Webb and William Funkhouser conducted an extensive archaeological survey of Big Bone Lick, which uncovered two prehistoric burial mounds and a cemetery of uncertain age."National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Big Bone Lick State Park," United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, February 2000