Murray Springs Clovis Site in Sierra Vista, Arizona

Outside Sierra Vista, Arizona is a quiet desert trail, scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape where plants are dry and waiting between infrequent rainstorms. However, over 10,000 years ago, this place was an Ice Age paradise—a place where mammoths came for water and humans came to hunt.

The Murray Springs site was discovered by archaeologists C. Vance Haynes and Peter Mehringer from the University of Arizona in 1966. The types of tools found across the site were left behind by the Clovis Culture. It is believed that megafauna such as bison, horses, and mammoths came to drink along the now-dry riverbed, becoming easy prey for the well-armed humans camped nearby. 

All that remains today is a trail between some of the dig sites and interpretive signs describing the discoveries made and the daily lives of the Clovis people.