Prehistoric Hunters

The nearby cave is Wilson Butte Cave, a collapsed lava blister that Idaho State geologists came across in 1958. Ruth Gruhn, then a graduate student, dug it in 1959 and 1960 for the Idaho State College Museum and Harvard's Peabody Museum, and again in 1988 and 1989. Her oldest dates, about 15,000 and 14,500 years, are among the earliest claimed in North America, and they remain argued over, resting on pooled bone and a gap of nearly 4,000 years. The top layers she tied to the Shoshone. The cave is on public land.

What the plaque says

Prehistoric Hunters Bone fragments of extinct species of ground sloth, horse, camel, and elephant found in a nearby cave mingle with weapons and radiocarbon dates from Idaho's earliest hunters Archaeologists have confirmed that people camped here at least 10,000 years ago, some suspect they might have arrived 6,000 years earlier. The youngest occupation layer began at 1300 A.D. and includes figurines, baskets, moccasins and pottery -- and bones of much smaller animals than those hunted by the Paleoindian pioneers. 276 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Minidoka National Historic Site — 2.4 mi
  The prisoners built a board for the names of their sons in the Army. When the camp was given away as farms, the board was lost.
• Shoshone Falls — 7.6 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.
• Perrine Bridge — 9.6 mi
  Four hundred and eighty-six feet of air between deck and river, and the one span in the country you may jump from without asking.

More markers nearby

• Hunt — steps away
• Hansen Bridge — 6.7 mi
• Emigrant Road — 8.8 mi
• Shoshone Falls — 9.7 mi