The museum is located on U. S. Highway 70 five miles northeast of Portales, New Mexico and may easily be bypassed if you are unaware that it is there. It was opened in 1969 primarily to display artifacts discovered at the Blackwater Draw Site. Although a state museum, it is under the direction of Dr. John Montgomery of Eastern New Mexico University-Portales. The Archeological Site is five miles north of U. S. 70 on NM 467, and Dr. Joanne Dickenson is the on-site curator and archeologist there.
Much controversy has existed over the peopling of the Americas and the search for physical evidence in the form of tools and bones. Evidence was literally washed up in 1908 when torrential rains fell near the tiny town of Folsom, west of Clayton, New Mexico. The flood scoured deep channels and killed many families and livestock. George McJunkin, a ranch foreman, checking flood damage, found fossil bones sticking out of an exposed section of Wildhorse Arroyo. He knew these were not bones of cattle but thought they were of Bison.
{ 0 comments }
