More than 100 people, including park officials, gather under a shelter surrounded by lush green grass at the Big Bone Lick Historic Site in Boone County. Park interpreter Claire Kolkmeyer welcomes the crowd.
“Good Morning, everyone, my name is Claire Kolkmeyer. I am the park naturalist and bison caretaker here at Big Bone Lick State Historic Site. It is a privilege to host you all here today for Big Bone’s newest designation as National Historic Landmark,” announced Kolkmeyer.
Kolkmeyer said that a National Historic Landmark designation is the highest federal recognition a property can get.
“And that’s for its archeological significance, which is Big Bone’s reasoning. But also it can be architecture or history of the building itself. So, Big Bone still holds a National Natural Landmark designation. And so, we’re one of only now 16 sites in the entire U.S. that holds both the National Natural Landmark and the National Historic Landmark,” said Kolkmeyer.
She said the more than 500-acre park is significant, not only nationally but internationally.
“With our understanding of extinction as we know it today, with our understanding of early life, especially in North America. Identifying all these new species, different historical figures who have been here, like Lewis and Clark and George Washington, had bones from Big Bone. And Benjamin Franklin had an interest. And President Jefferson sending Lewis and Clark here to collect bones,” said Kolkmeyer.
The 29-year-old wears forest green pants and a matching cap. Her khaki-colored shirt displays her name tag and a park emblem. She said Big Bone Lick houses artifacts and fossils from thousands of years ago.
“Here at Big Bone, we focus on the end of the Ice Age or the Pleistocene, and that’s when your glaciers were retreating, the earth was warming. So, it can stretch back as far as about 20 thousand years, but we primarily focus on the last 10 to 12 thousand years ago,” said Kolkmeyer.
Kolkmeyer explains why the museum is a good place to start a tour.
“Here in the museum, we cover a little bit of everything about the park’s history, which reaches all the way back to 450 million years ago with our Ordovician fossils. You can see a full-scale Harlan’s ground sloth, a bull mastodon skull, and loads of other artifacts and bones. So, most people are able to connect the big bone to the big bones that were found here, but the second part of our name is what really drew the animals here. So Big Bone Lick. Lick is another name for a salt spring. These animals that visited the park were all herbivores, so they were needing to find salt from somewhere. So, they’d come here to Big Bone to lick the waters of our salt springs or lick the mud to get the salt they needed,” explained Kolkmeyer.
Inside the museum, there are a couple of open-air exhibits and nine display cases. Kolkmeyer stands next to a replica of a Harlan’s ground sloth.
“He’s totally a replica except for the tibia in the case there that was found by a park guest back in 2017. This sloth is a great example of what they would have looked like, but this is not how we would have found them. This would be considered an articulated skeleton where he’s still all together. The way we find our fossils and bones here is they’re typically separated, they’ve been tumbled in the creek. They’ve been buried and reburied several times. So, it’s usually finding bits and pieces rather than the whole skeleton,” said Kolkmeyer.
Claire invites me to ride with her in a utility vehicle back a long gravel pathway to see the herd of Bison.
“The Bison serve as our living link to our Ice Age ancestors. So, they connect us directly to what the park is most well-known for. But then, Bison are also our national mammal, so they hold the same status and recognition as the bald eagle,” said Kolkmeyer.
Thousands of people visit the park each year. Gift shop associate Janie Peace said visitors come from around the world.
“We have people here last week was from Ireland. I had some from Switzerland. I had some today from Toronto. They’re very interested in the history here and how it came about,” explained Peace.
On this day Bill Schieman from Wilmington, Ohio, and his family are checking out the salt springs at Big Bone.
“I love all the history. I love the history of the collection of salt," said Schieman.
While federal funding cuts could impact some national parks, Commissioner of Kentucky State Parks, Russ Meyer, said he isn’t worried about that for Big Bone Lick.
"We’ve got our share of problems, but that’s not one of them."
Meyer is looking forward to improvements and a new project being developed at Big Bone Lick Historic Site.
