In 1908, a cowboy checking flood damage spotted giant bones in a New Mexico arroyo; the site later helped overturn accepted ideas about America’s earliest inhabitants

In 1908, a devastating flood tore through the small New Mexico town of Folsom, leaving homes damaged, streets underwater, and at least 17 people dead. But when the water finally began to recede, one cowboy went out to inspect the damage. What George McJunkin noticed in a newly cut arroyo would eventually help change what scientists believed about the earliest people in North America, as per Archaeology Southwest.

From Cowboy to Curious Observer

George McJunkin was born into slavery near Midway, Texas, in 1851. His father worked as a blacksmith, and George grew up around horses, eventually becoming skilled at riding and roping.


After the Civil War, McJunkin left Texas as a free man and traveled to northern New Mexico in search of work. He became a cowboy and developed a reputation as one of the region's best horse breakers.

But McJunkin was interested in more than ranch work. Accounts of his life describe him as deeply curious, particularly about science. Because he had not received a conventional education, he taught himself whenever he could. Other cowboys helped him learn to read, sometimes exchanging reading lessons for his help with horses. He also learned Spanish and became a link between Mexican and Anglo communities in the region.

By the early 1900s, McJunkin had become foreman of the Crowfoot Ranch near Folsom.

What Did the Flood Reveal?

On August 27, 1908, Folsom was struck by a powerful cloudburst that produced catastrophic flooding. Newspaper accounts described people desperately trying to escape the rising water by climbing onto roofs or holding onto furniture. The storm was among the worst floods the area had experienced, and the next morning water was still running through the streets.

The disaster also changed the landscape.

The day after the flood, McJunkin was checking fences and arroyos for damage when he and his friend Bill Gordon came across a newly exposed section of Wild Horse Arroyo, a side drainage connected to the Dry Cimarron River.

There, McJunkin noticed bones.

He recognized them as bison bones, but something immediately stood out. They were much larger than the bison he had seen before.

McJunkin understood that he might have found something unusual. Instead of simply moving on, he began trying to get scientists and other interested people to examine the discovery.

Why Did McJunkin Believe the Bones Were Important?

McJunkin spent the rest of his life attempting to draw attention to the bones. He contacted an expert in Las Vegas, New Mexico, who had studied mammoth remains and other extinct animals.

He and Gordon also showed some of the bones to people in Raton who were interested in discovering evidence of extinct animals. Yet McJunkin never got to see the mystery solved. He died in January 1922, still without an answer to the question of what the enormous bones represented.

Seven months later, the discovery finally received a closer examination.

A team that included Carl Schwacheim, banker Fred Howarth, a Roman Catholic priest and a taxidermist traveled to Wild Horse Arroyo. Their notes described enormous bones and stone spear points emerging from the exposed earth.

The discovery was about to become much more significant than anyone had initially realized.

What Happened at the Folsom Site?

In 1926, one of the people involved in the earlier investigation took some of the bones to J. D. Figgins of the Colorado Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Figgins had never seen bones like them and believed the site deserved serious investigation. He and Harold Cook began formal excavations that year.

Their work uncovered remains from at least 30 extinct bison. The animals were later identified as Bison antiquus, a species that had not yet been described in scientific literature.

But the bones were only part of the story.

The excavation became far more important in the summer of 1927, when researchers found a stone spear point positioned in the soil between the ribs of one of the extinct bison.

That small stone object provided the crucial connection.

What Did the Spear Point Change?

At the time, many archaeologists and paleontologists believed humans had occupied North America for only about 4,000 years. The Folsom discovery challenged that belief. The spear point provided evidence that humans had been present alongside an extinct animal that had disappeared thousands of years earlier. Researchers concluded that people had been living in the Southwest more than 11,000 years ago. Later discoveries would push evidence of human presence in North America even further into the past, but the Folsom site represented a major turning point.

It became the first site generally recognized as evidence of the great antiquity of human habitation in North America. The discovery generated enormous interest in archaeology in the Southwest and in the Pleistocene period.

And it all traced back to the observation of a cowboy who recognized that the bones he had found did not look ordinary.

Why Was George McJunkin's Role Overlooked?

McJunkin's importance was not widely recognized during his lifetime. He had found the site and understood that the enormous bones deserved attention, but he died before scientists confirmed what the discovery meant.

Nearly five decades after his death, George Agogino of Eastern New Mexico University began hearing stories about McJunkin from people living around Folsom.

Agogino and writer Franklin Folsom followed those accounts and interviewed people who had known McJunkin. Their work helped document both his remarkable life and his role in bringing the Folsom discovery to the attention of the scientific community.

The recognition mattered because the story was not simply about a famous archaeological excavation. It was also about the person who first noticed something unusual and refused to ignore it, as per Archaeology Southwest.

The Legacy of a Cowboy's Discovery

George McJunkin never knew that the bones he discovered after the 1908 flood would become part of one of the most important archaeological discoveries in North America.

His observation at Wild Horse Arroyo ultimately helped overturn an established idea about when humans first lived on the continent. The later discovery of the Folsom point transformed a collection of enormous bones into evidence that people had lived alongside extinct animals thousands of years earlier than many scientists had believed.

The story also highlights the importance of curiosity. McJunkin was a cowboy, ranch foreman and self-taught reader, not a formally trained archaeologist. Yet he recognized that something about those bones mattered.

His discovery helped open a new chapter in American archaeology and changed the way researchers understood the ancient history of North America.

FAQs

What did George McJunkin discover?

George McJunkin discovered unusually large bison bones exposed in Wild Horse Arroyo after the 1908 Folsom flood. The site later became the location of the important Folsom archaeological discovery.

Why was the Folsom discovery important?

The discovery of a stone spear point among the remains of extinct bison showed that humans lived in the Southwest more than 11,000 years ago, challenging earlier ideas about the age of human habitation in North America.