Lake Theo Folsom Bison Kill Site

The site was reported to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in 1972, when bleached buffalo bones and Folsom point fragments lay along an eroded canyon edge, and the museum's tests ran in 1974 and 1977. A radiocarbon date from the Folsom bone bed came out at 9,360 years before present, and a second, Plano-age bone bed dated to about 8,010. In 1974 excavators found three bison jaw halves, leg bones and a spine set upright together in a small hole beneath the Folsom bone bed, which the Handbook of Texas describes as a ceremonial feature.

What the plaque says

Lake Theo Folsom Bison Kill Site Stone tool fragments were discovered in 1965 and 1972 on the shores of Lake Theo, named for former landowner Theodore Geisler. Archeological testing in 1974 revealed a campsite and bison butchering and processing area dating back to the age of Folsom man, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Projectile points and scraping tools were found at a depth of four feet, along with over 500 bones from an extinct type of bison. Ponds in Holmes Canyon, now covered by Lake Theo, probably attracted prehistoric men to this area. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caprock Canyons State Park & Trailway — 1.0 mi
  Red canyons below the Caprock escarpment where the Texas State Bison Herd, descended from calves Mary Ann Goodnight saved in 1878, has right of way on the park roads.
• Bob Wills Museum — 10 mi
  The old Turkey school, now holding Bob Wills's boots, hats, his father's fiddle and his barbershop tools, in the cotton town that fills each April for Bob Wills Day.

More markers nearby

• William E. Schott — 4.5 mi
• Gasoline Cotton Gin — 6.0 mi
• Bankhead Highway in Turkey — 10 mi
• First Methodist Church of Turkey — 10 mi