Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument Texas

The monument protects a mesa covered in a lithic scatter carpet of flint, so thick you cannot walk without stepping on human generated flakes of Alibates flint.  The quarries were dug, by hand, 1,000 years ago.  However, gathering of flint from the mesa has been taking place for 13,000 years.

Tours of Alibates are free! The park offers two tours per day, at 10 and at 2, by reservation only. The tours are one mile, have an elevation gain of 170 feet and take two hours.

Sand lilies, a late bloomer, grace the park in the late summer. They attract a variety of insects including bees, hummingbird moths and butterflies.

Archeological traces of prehistoric Indians' homes, workshops, and campsites dot the entire Canadian River region of the Texas Panhandle, but few sites are as dramatic as Alibates Flint Quarries. Actually an agatized, or silicified, dolomite, the flint is distinctive for its many bright colors. This flint comes from a 10-square-mile area around the monument, but most is concentrated on about 60 acres atop a mesa in the heart of the 1,000 acre monument.

More than 700 quarries exist where this flint was dug out by hand. The quarries today are usually round ovals about six or more feet in diameter with depressions in the center. Wind and rain have filled the once four to eight foot deep holes with soil.

Unweathered flint was obtained by digging a foot or more below the surface.  The flint bearing dolomite layers are up to eight feet thick. Tools made from Alibates Flint have been found in many places across the Great Plains and Southwest. Its use dates from 13,000 years ago to about 1870.

There are several hypotheses as to how the flint formed within the dolomite. The most widely accepted explanation is that about 670,000 years ago volcanic eruptions occurred in or around what is now called the Yellowstone Country of Wyoming. The resulting silica rich ash drifted above the much older, Permian era dolomite. As rainwater percolated through the ash, the silica dissolved (or went into solution) and soaked into the dolomite. The calcium carbonate which forms dolomite washed out, leaving (as a precipitate) silica dioxide, flint or chert.

Let Rawhide Travel and Tours help you with all your reservation needs. Call us at (602) 843-5100 or visit our website: rawhidetravel.com.

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