The Conservancy achieved a milestone in 1995 when it successfully lead a campaign to raise $225,000 to acquire the Lamb Spring site in Colorado, its 100thpreservation project. Lamb Spring is a rare late-Pleistocene kill-and-processing site that includes the well-preserved bones of at least 24 mammoths and many prehistoric camel, horses, bison, and other extinct mammals. Archaeologists uncovered Cody-complex stone tools and spear points dating to between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago in association with the faunal remains. Research at Lamb Spring continues and some scholars believe the site may even be proven to have a pre-Clovis component. As this site overlies an extensive gravel deposit (which was already being quarried in 1995), the Conservancy had to take quick action to save it. In partnership with the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Colorado Historical Fund, which provided a $100,000 grant, funds were raised to purchase and preserve this important Paleo-Indian site.
Resources for further reading:
Lamb Spring Archaeological Preserve
Denver Post: Douglas County’s Lamb Spring Archaeological Dig Could Rewrite Human History
1994-95 Winter Newsletter_Lamb Spring Article
