stuck in the soft earth, showing how the fossils were created.The
salt lick, or lick, as it is more generally known locally, and its
fossil deposits, were long known to the original inhabitants of the area. The
mineral springs are created by water flowing through the underlying formations of
limestone and
shale, where the trapped salts are dissolved and carried, in solution, to the surface, creating a
brine spring.
18th century The site may have been visited as early as 1739 by Captain
Charles le Moyne de Longueuil, Baron de Longueuil. He took the fossils he recovered back to France with him the next year and donated them to the natural history museum in the
Jardin des Plantes. On March 13, 1750,
Christopher Gist stopped at Big Bone Lick Gist is referring to Robert Smith, an Indian trader, who may have visited Big Bone Lick as early as 1744. In 1762, amateur naturalist James Wright wrote to
John Bartram describing the Big Bone Lick and some of the fossils there, although he had not been there himself, and had heard about them from the Indians: :"There appear to be the remains of 5 Entire Sceletons, with their heads All pointing towards Each other, And near together, suppos'd to have fallen at the same time...Their heads, of which two were larger than the rest, one of these, they said a Man Could but Just Grasp in Both his Arms, with a long Nose, And the Mouth on the underside...They Judged the Creature when Alive must have been the Size of a Small House." The bones were first examined by botanist
Peter Collinson who pronounced them "the carcasses of drowned elephants," who had died, according to Collinson, during
The Deluge described in
the Book of Genesis. Anatomist
William Hunter examined the bones and suggested that they came from an extinct species of carnivorous elephant, which became known as "the American
incognitum". Naturalist
Georges Cuvier decided that they belonged to an extinct ancestor of the elephant, which Cuvier named "
Mastodontes." The idea that any species ever became extinct was revolutionary at this time. On June 15, 1775,
Nicholas Cresswell visited Big Bone Lick, then called "Elephant Bone Lick". His diary entry reads, in part: :"Found several bones of a prodigious size, I take them to be Elephants, for we found a part of a tusk, about two foot long, Ivory to all appearance, but by length of time had grown yellow and very soft. All of us stripped and went into the pond to grabble for teeth and found several. Joseph Passiers found a jaw tooth which he gave me. It was judged by the company to weigh 10 pound. I got a shell of a Tusk of hard and good ivory about eighteen inches long. There is a great number of bones in a Bank on the side of this pond of an enormous size but decayed and rotten. Ribs 9 inches broad, Thigh bones 10 inches diameter. What sort of animals these were is not clearly known." 's 1794 map of Kentucky In 1795 future president
William Henry Harrison collected 13
hogsheads full of fossils, all of which were lost when the barge carrying them sank on the Ohio River.
19th century requesting that the bones Rogers had collected at Big Bone Lick be packed and shipped to a New Orleans collector, who would then forward them to Washington.In 1803 physician
William Goforth excavated a large number of bones at Big Bone Lick and sold them in Europe, although the money was stolen from him. Goforth described his finds to
Meriwether Lewis who wrote a lengthy description of the bones to
Thomas Jefferson. Lewis visited Big Bone Lick in late 1803 and retrieved a number of bones, all of which were lost or stolen. In September 1807 Lewis's friend
William Clark, accompanied by his brother
George Rogers Clark, visited Big Bone Lick and removed over 300 bones and teeth, which he sent to Jefferson with an eleven-page description. Jefferson donated some of the bones to the
Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the
Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Studies of the bones allowed naturalists to distinguish between mastodons and mammoths and a few other species found in the collection. Jefferson's own private collection was unfortunately ground into fertilizer by a servant. Clark also found three
Clovis spear points, which indicated that early Native Americans had hunted in the area.
collected from Big Bone Lick and identified as Megalonyx laqueatus'' in 1831 by
Richard Harlan.The Clay House, a resort hotel, opened nearby in 1815, offering visitors an opportunity to bathe in the supposedly medicinal salt mineral springs. It quickly became popular among naturalists, who came to find bones for museums or private collections. Notable visitors included Yale professor
Benjamin Silliman and natural history professor
Constantine S. Rafinesque, among others. The Clay House closed in 1830. In 1831, paleontologist
Richard Harlan identified a new species of
giant sloth,
Megalonyx laqueatus, from bones found at Big Bone Lick. In 1840, the species was renamed
Mylodon harlani to honor Harlan, and is now known as
Paramylodon harlani. By the mid-19th century most of the fossils had been removed, and in 1868 paleontologist
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler conducted an extensive excavation to remove all remaining fossils and take them to the Harvard
Museum of Comparative Zoology for study. (who had visited the site in 1841) regarding Big Bone Lick.
20th century April 1, 1926 saw the installation of a memorial bell at the park's Southern entrance, following the passing of
George Rogers Clark. In 1932,
William Snyder Webb and William Funkhouser conducted an extensive
archaeological survey of Big Bone Lick, which uncovered two prehistoric
burial mounds and a cemetery of uncertain age. From 1962 to 1967 the
University of Nebraska conducted excavations, seeking any remaining fossils and attempting to determine the age and ecological context of the mammoths and mastodons that had died there. These fossils were dated to the
Wisconsin Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago) and are now on display at the
University of Nebraska State Museum. The tools and ceramics were recovered from a large pit and were determined to be
Late Woodland and
Fort Ancient types. The investigators concluded that the feature was "established and used by Late Woodland people, and that the locality was subsequently occupied by Fort Ancient people after an indeterminate period." It appears likely that Paleo-Indian groups visited the site to make salt by boiling brine, as salt was an important trade item. The park was listed as a
National Natural Landmark in February 2009. It bills itself as "the birthplace of American
paleontology". The park was further given
National Historic Landmark designation in 2024. ==Activities and amenities==