Our Trip to the Waco Mammoth National Monument

We took a road trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for Spring Break this year and I wanted to check out the Magnolia Market at the Silos in Waco. Fortunately, a friend of mine also told me about the Waco Mammoth National Monument so, I convinced my family that if we stopped at the Silos, we could also check out some mammoth bones.😉

Magnolia Market did not disappoint with gorgeous weather, ice cream food trucks, and playing cornhole on the green. I restrained myself and just bought a baseball cap before heading to the Mammoth Museum that was only ten minutes away.

The museum had a self guided tour so we walked through the trails down to the dig shelter where the mammoths were discovered by a couple of buddies looking for arrowheads in 1978. Instead of arrowheads, they found a giant femur and little did they know they stumbled on the only fossilized mammoth herd ever discovered!

Here’s an idea of how big that mammoth was (and just how tall the kids are getting!) 😳The dig shelter was built over the creek bed that the mammoths were discovered in. A saber tooth cat (also called a Smilodon) and a camel were also found! It is still unknown how the mammoths perished, but it is thought to have been a flash flood from the creek.

Here is one of the female mammoths that were discovered – we love how you could get up close and see the incredible preservation of the bones and the tusks too!