Outdoor Museum - Discovery Trail August 10, 2008

The new Discovery Trail addition to the Outdoor Museum at Big Bone Lick gives visitors a glimpse of the drama that unfolded at the springs in pre-history. Recreated grasslands, wetlands and wooded savannas lie along the trail leading to a "bog" diorama. Shown going into or struggling inside the marsh bog are a woolly mammoth, a mastodon, a giant sloth, bison, various skeletal remains, and scavengers feeding on the carcasses. Visitors approach the diorama on a boardwalk that rises above the floor of the marsh, enabling them to "look history in the eye." The outdoor museum continues for a mile past the entrance to the Discovery trail. The paved Big Bone Creek Trail wanders through the original swampland, now growing wild with brush and flowers, and the last remaining salt-sulphur spring. The final portion of the loop, the Bison Trace, brings a live buffalo herd into view.