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BOULDER - An intricately fashioned stone hunting point, created at a time when camels and mammoths roamed southern Utah, has been put on display in Boulder.
David Holladay, who found the Clovis point believed created by a prehistoric American Indian 11,000 years ago, presented the 3-inch, pinkish-colored stone piece to the Anasazi State Park Museum earlier this week. Some 20 residents of the small town attended the ceremony.
"This fulfills a dream for me," said Holladay of the find he named the "Boulder Clovis Point."
Clovis points are indicative of people who populated North America at the time of the last ice age and are named after Clovis, N.M., where the first points were discovered that display specific characteristics.
Holladay, a guide in the area, said he found the point in November 2004 near the Garfield County town of Boulder while walking his dog on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
"I looked down to my left a saw a straight edge with zig-zag markings and said, 'That's a point,' " said Holladay. "I was shaking and trembling in my stomach to my heart."
Holladay left the point in place for a couple of months, unable to return to the site because of snow.
He eventually told museum manager Michael Nelson, who examined it and suggested that Holladay notify Kanab-based Bureau of Land Management officials who administer the 1.9-million-acre monument.
Holladay said he had his reservations about telling the BLM, afraid the stone point would be relegated to a box in a basement.
He was reassured by the monument's science-programs administrator Marietta Eaton that the point would be put on display. "She kept her word," said Holladay.
Eaton commended Holladay at Monday's presentation, saying he did what anyone should do who finds artifacts on the monument: Leave it in place and contact museum or BLM officials.
She said the monument relies on the public to help locate artifacts and fossils.
"It's the citizen-scientists who are our eyes and ears out there," said Eaton.
The point, authenticated by researchers at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz., is of exquisite workmanship, she said, and is the oldest artifact ever found on the monument.
Eric Feiler, an archaeologist with the nonprofit PaleoCultural Research Group of Flagstaff, told the audience he has done a preliminary investigation of the site where Holladay found the point.
"It [the site] may not be Clovis, but the technology there suggests it's something different," said Feiler. "There is a significant amount of stuff there."
Boulder resident Nina Gove marveled at the point that was passed among audience members Monday.
"This is outstanding and one of the great moments of my life," said Gove. "To think of people making this is just magical."