Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument is a

U.S. national monument In the United States, a national monument is a protected area that can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the President of the United States or an act of Congress. National monuments prot ...

in the state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. For thousands of years, people came to the red bluffs above the

Canadian River The Canadian River is the longest tributary of the Arkansas River in the United States. It is about long, starting in Colorado and traveling through New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle, and Oklahoma. The drainage area is about .flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

, 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. Native Americans of the Ice Age Clovis culture used Alibates flint for spear points to hunt the

Columbian mammoth The Columbian mammoth (''Mammuthus columbi'') is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line ...

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 Panhandle culture is a prehistoric culture of the southern High Plains during the Middle Ceramic Period from AD 1200 to 1400. Panhandle sites are primarily in the panhandle and west central Oklahoma and the northern half of the Texas Panhandle. ...

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 The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propert ...

and can only be viewed by ranger-led guided tours, which must be reserved in advance. Alibates Flint Quarries was the only national monument in the state of Texas until the Military Working Dog Teams National Monument was created in 2013, and is adjacent to and managed together with

Lake Meredith National Recreation Area Lake Meredith National Recreation Area is a United States national recreation area located about north of Amarillo, Texas, in the Texas Panhandle. Its main attraction is Lake Meredith, a reservoir created by Sanford Dam on the Canadian River. ...

. 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.

References

External links

*
National Park Service webpage of Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument
{{authority control Quarries in the United States Archaeological sites in Texas Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas National Park Service National Monuments in Texas Protected areas of Potter County, Texas Protected areas established in 1965 1965 establishments in Texas National Register of Historic Places in Potter County, Texas Flint mining

See also

References

External links