Wind Cave Nat'l park & Mammoth site
Trip Start
Aug 08, 2004
1
10
12
Trip End
Aug 28, 2004
Hot Springs,
South Dakota,
United States
Monday, November 26, 2007
mammoth site both near Hot springs. The wind cave was discovered by
brothers in 1881, who heard wind blowing out of a small hole in the
side of a mountain. We took the natural entrance tour inside the cave
and saw lots of boxwork. It was hard to take pictures in the cave since
of course there was very little lighting but we did our best. The cave
tour was a great new experience for us both.
After the cave
tour we headed a bit south to the mammoth site
Our guide at the original cave entrance
. The history of thissite goes back 26,000 years. A large colony of olumbian and woolly
mammoths were trapped and died in a spring-fed pond
near what is now the southwest edge of Hot Springs, South Dakota.
Discovered by chance in 1974 while excavating for a housing development
the Mammoth Site is the world's largest Columbian mammoth exhibit and
research
center for Pleistocene studies. As a child I loved dinosaurs and
anything similar. This was an amazing thing to see all of these fossils
in one place still being excavated.
