Waco Mammoth National Monument

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On my last day of the road trip, on the drive from Austin to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, I took one last side trip, this time to the small, but important Waco Mammoth National Monument. 

The National Monument has its origins in the 1978 discovery by two exploring teenagers of a Columbian mammoth bone near a river bank in Waco, Texas. Standing as tall as 14 feet and weighing 20,000 pounds, Columbian mammoths (not to be confused with the smaller Wooly mammoth) roamed across what is present-day Texas thousands of years ago. Today, the fossil specimens at Waco Mammoth National Monument represent the nation's first and only recorded evidence of a nursery herd of ice age Columbian mammoths.

I got to the National Monument when it opened at 9 am, took the informative guided tour of the dig shelter (which protects the bones and dig site), and spent about 45 minutes at the National Monument. I then drove to downtown Waco, Texas (the home of Baylor University) to check out the closed Dr. Pepper Museum (which I would have certainly visited had it been open), and then drove to the airport for the flight home to Philadelphia.
Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas (it was closed when I went there!)




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