Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument

 I wanted to put this in my I Like post from last week, but it was already getting a little long so I decided to do a separate post.  

I love visiting National Park Service sites, and of course the big name ones are the National Parks.  But there are lots of other NPS sites, National Monuments and National Historic Parks etc., and I've never visited a bad one.  There aren't a ton of NPS sites between my place here in OK and my parents place in NM, but there are a few.  One of them is Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument which is about 25 miles north of Amarillo.  The country is hilly and bit ordinary looking from far out, but get up close and there are treasures to find!

I decided to stop on my way back, and so I called them up to see if they were open (it was January 1) and they were, and I was able to sign up for the ranger led tour of the flint quarries.  I got an early start on the drive back and the weather was mild enough that I knew I could take the pups for a walk and then leave them in the car (with water and a breeze) while I did the ranger tour.

You guys, it was so very very cool.  I had absolutely no idea what it even was, I just figured that there had to be something interesting or it wouldn't be an NPS site.  It turns out that native people have been quarrying flint there to make tools (spear points, arrowheads, etc.) since the last ice age!  Weapon points quarried there have been found in mammoth remains that date to the Clovis people in New Mexico, around 9500-9000 BC.  More recently, the Antelope Creek People, part of the Plains Village cultures, lived and quarried the Alibates flint, which is limited to this very small area.  Around 1,000 small quarries dug by the Antelope Creek People have been discovered in the area of the monument as well as archeological sites of their homes/villages.

The most unexpected thing for me though is that the flint is rainbow colored!  It's the most beautiful array of rocks I've ever seen, every color from pink to red orange, purple, blue, white, black, brown, cream, with stripes and curtain formations, and speckles and every pattern imaginable.   

The hills are topped with a layer of dolomite, a carbonaceous mineral that forms sedimentary rock, in this case deposited when it was at the bottom of a shallow, warm, sea, rich with little sea creatures.  Underneath the dolomite caps is the permian layer, with red iron-rich dirt and minerals, and underneath that a silica-rich ashen layer deposited by the eons ago eruption of a supervolcano.  Apparently, these mineral formations, coupled with fossilization/petrification of sea creatures and lichen and the resulting presence of silica led to agatization of the dolomite (which is boring grey and blobby) to form the most gorgeous array of rainbow flint.  

This rock below had partially agatized-- you can see the sort of boring rough looking dolomite on the outer edges.  The black is a layer of petrified lichen, and then there in the middle you can see the red and white agatized flint (it looks kind of like marbled steak or bacon).  In person the difference is much more pronounced, the agatized sections are shiny and smooth and just catch the light in a beautiful way.

Anyway, the native peoples discovered this area and dug quarries to extract the flint.  They traded it throughout what's now the central United States over a very wide area.  At the top of each quarry (most of which are visible now only as indentations that have slowly eroded and filled back in with scrub, are areas of lithic scatter.  Basically the ground is covered with beautiful rainbow flint pieces that were castoffs, not suitable to make the trade blanks that were traded to other people to make into arrowheads or other tools.  Many of the pieces weren't suitable because they had crystal inclusions, which makes them not strong enough for weapons (the Alibates flint is harder than many other flints, about 7.5), but so pretty to see while walking around.  It was so hard not to take three million pictures, but here are a few of the pieces that caught my eye.  The most amazing thing to me is that they all come from the same rocks! Within inches of each other this variety of color.  So crazy!

Red and Black!

Freckles and stripes!

Blue and pink together!

And then there were ones with crystals in them!

This one had little mini-geode type inclusions, beatiful reddish crystals inside the grey-white flint.

This one was a partially agatized coral fossil covered in crystals.

This one had these funny roundish crystal things growing inside the flint.

And really, they're all over the ground, just everywhere you look are new colors and patterns.

I was the only visitor there at the time, and I got a one-on-one ranger tour of the flint quarries.  The trail through the quarries is only accessible with a ranger, apparently before that people were stealing the flint.  But the tours are twice a day and free, so just call up and get on one.  It's the only way to see this beautiful place.  I had a wonderful tour with Ranger Elaine who was full of wonderful information.  What a great way to spend some time on New Years.   Definitely a hidden gem (almost literally) buried in the heart of the Texas panhandle.   Definitely worth the detour if you find your way crossing along I-40.