Wildflower Trail

Dogs Leashed

Features Geological Significance

Mastodon State Historic Site
WILDFLOWER TRAIL

Wildflower Trail guides visitors down a series of stairs to Kimmswick Bone
Bed where scientists first discovered evidence that American mastodons
coexisted with humans 12,000 years ago. The trail passes Callison
Memorial Bird Sanctuary, which is a wildflower area, before crossing an
old limestone quarry and going down a limestone bluff and talus slope to
the bone bed.

At the bone bed, an interpretive kiosk provides information about the
Pleistocene deposits. At the end of the ice age, this area's mineral springs
and swampland were home to the American mastodon, Harlan's ground
sloth, Jefferson's ground sloth, long-nosed peccary and stag moose. No
excavations are going on currently and the remnants of the bone bed site
remain safely buried for future generations.

Past the bone bed, the trail continues to a small foot bridge over a spring
that actively flows after heavy rain. After traveling uphill through a dense
oak woodland to the limestone bluff, the loop leads visitors back to the
museum or to Callison Memorial Bird Sanctuary.