Waco Mammoth National Monument Welcome Center, National Park Service visitor center in Waco, United States.
The Waco Mammoth National Monument Welcome Center is a National Park Service visitor facility in Texas dedicated to Columbian mammoths. It displays fossils and explains the excavation methods used to uncover these ancient remains preserved in the ground.
The site was discovered in 1978 and holds fossilized remains of 24 Columbian mammoths from the late ice age. These findings led to its designation as a national monument in 2015.
The center's name comes from the Columbian mammoths found here, and exhibits show the 1978 discovery by Paul Barron and Eddie Bufkin. Visitors can see the dig site and learn how the herd, mostly young adults, was preserved in a ravine.
The welcome center sits on Steinbeck Bend Drive, north of downtown Waco, and serves as the starting point for ranger-led walks to the dig shelter where the mammoth fossils lie. Access to the fossil site is by guided tour only; tours leave from the center and can be joined without a reservation. The grounds are reached by car, with parking at the center.
The nursery herd of 24 Columbian mammoths, mostly young adults and calves, died together in a single event and was never scattered by later flooding. Baylor University researchers uncovered them from 1978 onward, and the bone bed is displayed where it lay, inside the climate-controlled Dig Shelter rather than a separate museum hall.
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