National Monument protecitng quarry pits along the red bluffs above the Canadian River containing rainbow-hued flint
General Information
Last updated 9/14/2022
Ranger-guided quarry tours available daily at 10am and 1pm until October 22, 2022
For thousands of years, people came to the red bluffs above the Canadian River for flint, vital to their existence. Demand for the high-quality, rainbow-hued flint is reflected in the distribution of Alibates flint through the Great Plains and beyond. Indians of the Ice Age Clovis culture used Alibates flint for spear points to hunt the Columbian mammoth before the Great Lakes were formed. The flint usually lies just below the surface at ridge level in a layer up to 6 ft thick. The quarry pits were not very large, between 5 and 25 ft wide and 4 to 7 ft deep. Many of these quarries were exploited by the Antelope Creek people of the Panhandle culture between 1200 and 1450 AD. The stone-slabbed, multiroom houses built by the Antelope Creek people have long been of interest to the public and studied by archaeologists. Today, this area is protected by the U.S. National Park Service and can only be viewed by ranger-led guided tours, which must be reserved in advance.
The monument was authorized as Alibates Flint Quarries and Texas Panhandle Pueblo Culture National Monument on August 31, 1965, but the designation was shortened to the current name on November 10, 1978.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
