Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument
Plains Trail Region
At the Alibates Flint Quarries located in the Texas Panhandle, people quarried flint for toolmaking as early as 12,000 years ago. The stone, highly valued by early hunters occupying a pre-statehood Texas, lay just below the surface across the site in a layer up to six feet thick. The Ice Age Clovis Culture, some of the earliest known humans to utilize the site, used Alibates flint to fashion spear points for hunting down and killing the Imperial Mammoth. The flint entered one of the widest-ranging trade networks in the land and evidence of the Alibates material has been found hundreds of miles from its origins, making it a favorite among the Southwest’s prehistoric and Native American people for thousands of years.