Under a Wray Cornfield, an Ice Age Bison Hunt

In 1972, a rancher near Wray was leveling a low ridge when he turned up bones, and then a storm rinsed them off and left stone spear points sitting in the dirt. That ridge became the Jones-Miller site, and what came out of it is hard to picture: across three summers in the 1970s, a Smithsonian crew pulled up roughly 41,000 bison bones, the remains of an Ice Age hunt that took place around 10,800 years ago.

The animals were Bison antiquus, an extinct cousin of today’s bison, and the hunters left behind a style of spear point that gives the site its quiet claim to fame. It is the only Hell Gap-complex site known in Colorado, a single page from a chapter of human life on these plains that almost nowhere else preserved.

You can’t visit the dig. It sits on private farmland, and the big collection now lives at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. But the Wray Museum keeps part of the actual bone bed and spear points on display, along with a life-sized model of the ancient bison, so you can stand close to the real thing. For hours and what’s on view, check the City of Wray’s museum page.