Discovery Site of the Plainview Point
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first of this distinctive type of early man dart point was found by 15-year-old Val Keene Whitacre in 1941, in a caliche quarry on Running Water Draw. In 1944, quarry workers uncovered a fossil bone deposit, which was noted by scientists surveying the geology of the Plains. The next year a team of archeologists from the University of Texas, including Dr. E. H. Sellards and Dr. Alex D. Krieger, excavated the site and found 26 man-made artifacts, including several of the points, in association with the remains of about 100 extinct bison (Bison Taylori), about twice the size of modern species. The long flint point was then named for this site. The bone bed probably resulted from the primitive hunting method of stampeding bison over a cliff, and butchering of the dead and crippled animals for food. The cliff eroded away and covered the bones with 12 to 14 feet of silt. When exposed, the bone bed was 62 feet long, up to 10 feet wide, and 1.5 feet thick. Radiocarbon dating indicates that this site is 8,000 to 9,000 years old. The Plainview point is found most commonly in the Great Plains region of North America, but has been located also in Alaska and Mexico. 1973
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On the West Texas plains near Running Water Draw, a teenager's 1941 find led archaeologists to a bone bed where ancient hunters had killed scores of giant bison thousands of years ago. Excavations in the 1940s uncovered stone dart points among the remains of an extinct bison twice the size of modern species, and the distinctive point was named for this site. Radiocarbon dating places the kill some 8,000 to 9,000 years in the past, a window into the lives of Paleo-Indian hunters of the Great Plains.
Why it matters
The Plainview point helped scientists map the world of the earliest Americans, showing how skilled Ice Age hunters ranged across the continent long before written history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Picture the Southern High Plains near the end of the last Ice Age and in the thousands of years after it. The climate was shifting, the great Ice Age animals were disappearing, and the grasslands of what is now West Texas were home to a large bison species that has since gone extinct. People had been living in North America for a long time already, moving across the land in small, mobile bands.
Archaeologists call these early peoples Paleo-Indians. They are best known from their finely made stone projectile points, which changed in style over time and from region to region. The Plainview style belongs to the later part of that long period, after the better-known Clovis and Folsom traditions.
The modern chapter of the story starts in the 1940s. Plainview was a farming town on the edge of Running Water Draw, a shallow valley cutting through the flat plains. Local quarries dug out caliche, a hard, lime-rich layer of the soil, and in doing so they reached deposits that had been buried for thousands of years.
People & events
It started with a teenager. In 1941, fifteen-year-old Val Keene Whitacre found a distinctive long flint point in a caliche quarry along Running Water Draw. It was the first known example of the type that would carry this town's name.
Three years later, quarry workers broke into a dense bed of fossil bone. Scientists surveying the geology of the Plains took notice, and in 1945 a University of Texas team that included Dr. E. H. Sellards and Dr. Alex D. Krieger excavated the site. They recovered 26 human-made artifacts, several of them points like Whitacre's, mixed in with the remains of about a hundred bison of an extinct species roughly twice the size of today's animals. The style of point was then named for the site.
The excavators read the scene as a hunt: a herd driven over a bank, with the dead and injured animals butchered for food. Over time the bank eroded and buried the bones under 12 to 14 feet of silt. When exposed, the bone bed stretched 62 feet long, up to 10 feet wide, and a foot and a half thick. Archaeologists have kept studying and debating sites like this, including exactly how such kills happened and how best to date them. The marker presents the interpretation of its time.
Its place in the American story
The Plainview site is part of how scientists came to understand that people have lived in the Americas far longer than earlier generations believed. By linking human-made tools directly with the bones of extinct animals, sites like this one on the Great Plains made the deep antiquity of Native American history impossible to ignore.
The point itself became a reference marker in time. Once archaeologists could recognize a Plainview point, they could identify related finds elsewhere, and the marker notes that the style has turned up across the Great Plains and as far away as Alaska and Mexico. A single type of stone tool helps trace how far early hunting peoples ranged or shared ideas.
The discovery also shows how much of America's earliest history surfaces by accident: in quarries, road cuts, and farm fields, often first noticed by local people like a curious fifteen-year-old.
If you visit
Don't expect an excavation pit or a bone bed on display. What you'll find is a marker and a landscape. Stand here and look out over the draw, and try to picture it eight or nine thousand years ago: a herd of enormous bison, a band of hunters, and a bank that has long since worn away.
The flatness of the High Plains is part of the lesson. Shallow valleys like Running Water Draw held water and drew animals, and that made them places where people gathered too. Notice how the land dips around the draw compared with the open country around it.
This makes a thoughtful stop on a West Texas drive through the Llano Estacado. If you're interested in the deep past, look for regional museums along your route that interpret Paleo-Indian life on the Southern Plains. They help put a find like the Plainview point in context.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Val Keene Whitacre
- · E. H. Sellards
- · Alex D. Krieger
Themes & tags
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