Site of Significant Archaeological Find, American Mammoths

The building that turned up the mammoth had a long life of its own. Designed by E. A. Harrison and built by Brennan Construction from 1928 to 1930 at a cost of $1.5 million, the fourteen-story tower opened on January 18, 1930, as regional offices of the Santa Fe, which supervised more than 5,800 miles of railroad from here. It later stood empty for years before Potter County bought it in 1995 for $426,000. It was listed in the National Register in 1996, and after about $14.1 million in work it reopened for county offices in 2000.

What the plaque says

Site of Significant Archaeological Find, American Mammoths When this Santa Fe Railway general office building was erected in 1928, the remains of a mammoth were excavated from the basement and were placed in the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas. The extinct American mammoths were closely related to the modern elephants of Africa and Asia. They migrated from Asia into America early in the Pleistocene Epoch, or Ice Ages, more than 1,000,000 years ago. They thrived on this continent until the end of that epoch, when they disappeared, along with many other ice age animals such as the giant bison ground sloth, horse, camel, and other lesser animals. The causes of this extinction are still being investigated. There were several species of mammoths, some of them much larger than modern elephants. Remains of mammoths are so abundant in Pleistocene deposits of the Texas Panhandle that they serve as "Index Fossils" for beds of that age. Early inhabitants of North America, such as men of the Clovis Culture (circa 12,000 to 15,000 years ago), pursued the mammoth as a means of subsistence. Preservation of history is a policy of the Santa Fe Railway System. See exhibit, foyer of this building. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 1.7 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.3 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 8.5 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, The Amarillo Story — steps away
• Polk Street Schools — 0.2 mi
• Potter County, Establishing of — 0.3 mi
• Potter County — 0.3 mi