Elephant Hunters

The sign's elephant hunters come from one collapsed lava tube, Owl Cave at the Wasden site, west of Idaho Falls. Members of the Upper Snake River Prehistoric Society and Idaho State archaeologists dug it between the mid-1960s and 1977 and found a bison bone bed about 9,000 years old, and beneath it Columbian mammoth bone lying with Folsom spear points. Whether anyone hunted those mammoths is unsettled. A 2017 reanalysis dated the mammoth to about 13,000 years ago, older than the points, found no clear butchery, and suggested roof fall had broken the bones.

What the plaque says

Elephant Hunters Early day big game hunters, who occupied lava caves around here more than 12,000 years ago, had a diet that included elephants, camels, and giant bison. When a gradual change to a warmer, drier climate made local grasslands into more desert, their elephant herds left for cooler plains farther north. But 8,000 years ago, bison still were available here. Indians continued to hunt buffalo on these plains until about 1840. Then they had to go to Montana for their plains hunting trips. 365 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Menan Buttes — 26 mi
  Two volcanoes built where lava ran into the Snake River, and one of them open to walk around the rim.

More markers nearby

• Eagle Rock Ferry — 16 mi
• Taylor's Bridge — 16 mi
• Lava Formations — 17 mi
• Three Buttes — 18 mi