BONING UP ON THE PAST: MASTODON STATE HISTORIC SITE OFFERS GLIMPS OF LIFE IN ICE AGE

The 425-acre historic site is surrounded on three sides by development.

A painting at the museum depicts what life in Missouri might have looked like more than 10,000 years ago.

IMPERIAL -- Ten thousand years ago, elephant-like mastodons roamed the region. The huge beasts with their long, curved tusks thrived during the ice age.

Even today, their presence can be felt at Mastodon State Historic Site, a 425-acre site just off Interstate 55 at Exit 186 in Jefferson County.

The site, run by the state of Missouri, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It features a museum that showcases mastodon bones that have been found at the Kimmswick Bone Bed and the surrounding area. One exhibit, excavated at nearby Barnhart, is a mastodon tusk that is 8 feet long and 24 inches around.

There is a $2 admission charge to the museum for persons 15 years of age and older. Younger children are admitted free of charge. The museum is open year round from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from noon to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. It is closed on New Year's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

A central attraction at the museum is a life-size fiberglass model of the bone structure of a mastodon. An adult mastodon weighed four to six tons and stood eight to 10 feet tall at the shoulder.

Mastodons shouldn't be confused with mammoths, says Neal Trubowitz, administrator of the historic site. Both were huge, hairy elephant-like creatures. But mammoths more closely resembled today's modern elephants than mastodons, he points out.

Mastodons had low, sloping foreheads and more of a straight back than that of mammoths. "A mastodon was sort of stocky, like a pig," said Trubowitz.

Mammoths grazed on grasses while mastodons lived in wooded areas where they crunched on leaves and twigs.

Thousands of years ago, the region was a swampy site, full of lakes and ponds, and mineral springs, Trubowitz said. Scientists theorize that large mammals that came to the springs may have become trapped in the mud, which helped preserve their bones.

Bones of mastodons and other now-extinct animals were first found in the early 1800s in the Kimmswick area. The Mississippi River town, a few miles east of the historic site, was a thriving community.

The first major excavations were done by German immigrant Albert Koch in 1839. He found the bones of a mastodon, which he called a "Missouri Leviathan."

"He thought it was a water creature," said Trubowitz.

Over the years, the area attracted a reputation as one of the most extensive ice age bone beds in the nation. The bones of one Missouri mastodon are on display at the British Museum in London.

In the early 1900s, people traveled by train to Kimmswick to view ancient animal bones in a little shack of a museum.

Over the years, it is estimated that bones from more than 60 mastodons were taken from the area. Many of the mastodon bones and tusks were given away, sold, taken by relic hunters or destroyed by later limestone-quarrying operations.

In the early 1970s, the area was nearly lost to commercial development.

The state highway department, which a few years earlier had acquired most of the old bone beds for right of way for Interstate 55 construction, auctioned off the ground to some St. Louis developers in 1974.

But thanks to the efforts of four area women, a citizens committee was organized to save the bone beds. The committee mounted a successful campaign to get the state to buy the property. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources bought the property in 1976 for use as a state park. It was renamed as a historic site in 1996.

In 1979, three years after the state bought the property, archaeologists from the Illinois State Museum made a historic discovery. They found a large, stone spear point in direct contact with mastodon bones. The find showed that man had hunted the prehistoric beasts. The Paleo-Indian hunters, who lived in the region 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, may have contributed -- along with climate changes-- to the animal's extinction, scientists say.

Digs were also held at the Jefferson County site in 1980 and 1984. None have been held since then, said Trubowitz. "There is no big hole with bones sticking out of it."

Visitors, however, can walk along a half-mile, steep trail that leads from the museum to the site where mastodon bones were excavated.

The mastodon museum was opened to the public in 1988. The building includes a lab where scientists can examine bones.

Trubowitz said the site is one of the busiest of Missouri's state historic sites. Some 35,000 to 40,000 people visit the museum each year. The site's picnic areas attract about 160,000 people a year.

There are two hiking trails -- a three-fourths of a mile walk through the picnic area and a steep and rough, 2 1/4 mile trail that leads visitors along a limestone bluff, and through a forest.

The property includes a former limestone quarry. The area was quarried from 1905 to the 1930s. The quarry superintendent's house still stands on a limestone bluff, a short distance from the museum. The surrounding grounds are used by the museum. "We do spear throwing demonstrations for the kids," said Trubowitz.

Standing on the bluff, Trubowitz gazes at nearby subdivisions crowded with homes. "We are almost completely surrounded by development," he said. "We are a little island in suburbia."

Such a scene could never have been imagined by prehistoric man. "The Indians would have been up here watching for the mastodons," said Trubowitz.