Blackwater Draw

Blackwater Draw is a dry stream channel about 140 km (87 mi) long, heading in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, about 7.5 km (5 mi) southwest of Clovis, New Mexico and trending generally southeastward across the Llano Estacado toward the city of Lubbock, Texas, where it joins Yellow House Draw to form Yellow House Canyon at the head of the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos River. It stretches across eastern Roosevelt County, New Mexico and Bailey, Lamb, Hale, and Lubbock counties of West Texas and drains an area of 4,040 km2 (1,560 sq mi).

Blackwater Draw contains an important archaeological site that was first recognized in 1929 by Ridgely Whiteman of Clovis, New Mexico. Blackwater Locality No. 1 is the type-site of the Clovis culture. The first large-scale excavation came in 1932. Evidence of "fluted" points, spearheads also known as Clovis points (a New World invention) and other stone and bone weapons, tools, and processing implements were found at the archaeological site. The Clovis points were lanceolate and often longer than Folsom points. These artifacts are in association with the remains of extinct Late Pleistocene megafauna, including Columbian mammoth, camel, horse, bison, sabertooth cat, sloths, and dire wolf that were hunted by the early peoples who visited the site. Generations of some of the earliest New World inhabitants lived at Blackwater Draw which created a layer of human settlement debris from those like Clovis, Folsom, Portales, and Archaic period occupants. The furthest back would be the Clovis culture with radiocarbon dating between 11,600-11,000 years before the present. Blackwater Draw is among the first places these points were found and provides some of the best dated examples.

The archaeological site is known for its well-defined stratigraphic horizons that exhibit numerous cultural sequences. The sequences begin with the earliest New World peoples and continue through the southwestern archaic, and into the historic period. Investigations at Blackwater Draw have recovered protein residue found on Clovis weapons. This leads to the evidence of human occupation in association with Late Pleistocene fauna, including Columbian mammoth, camel, horse, bison, sabertooth cat and dire wolf. Towards the end of the Pleistocene period, the climate began to change, which brought warmer and drier weather causing the waterflow in the region to dramatically decrease. This decrease caused small seasonal lake basins called playas to form. These areas became popular hunting locations for early North Americans.

Since its discovery, the Blackwater Locality No. 1 site has been a focal point for scientific investigations by academic institutions and organizations from across the country. The Carnegie Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Academy of Natural Sciences, National Science Foundation, United States National Museum, National Geographic Society, and more than a dozen major universities either have funded or participated in research at Blackwater Draw. Eastern New Mexico University owns and manages the excavations and visitations at the site.

Since there is still a lot of opportunity for additional research, and additional public interest, Blackwater Draw was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961 and incorporated into the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

Read more about Blackwater Draw:  Blackwater Draw Museum

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