Back about 1900, a negro cowboy known as Nigger George, was riding the range on the Crowfoot Ranch near the little town of Folsom, New Mexico, searching for cattle. As George rode along, he came to a deep arroyo so he turned his horse and rode along its bank. Suddenly, in the opposite wall of the arroyo, the cowboy noticed some huge bones. They were larger than any bones he had ever seen and the fact that they were washing out of the arroyo wall several feet below the surface was puzzling. Fortunately George, although an illiterate man, was curious about the bones and, instead of riding on and forgetting them, collected a number and took them to the ranch house. The bones were obviously larger than those of modern bison or cattle but no one at the ranch was particularly interested in them. Many years passed and finally someone became mildly interested in the bones and gave them to Mr. Ed Price, of Raton, New Mexico. Again the years passed and it was not until 1925 that the bones once more attracted attention. In that year a number were sent to the Colorado Museum of Natural History and the paleontologists recognized them for what they were—the bones of an extinct bison. Thousands of years ago the bison had roamed the plains of North America. They were tremendous, long-horned animals, larger than our present-day bison. [Illustration: Park visitors entering Balcony House on ranger-guided tour] In order to obtain some of the ancient skeletons the museum sent expeditions to Folsom, New Mexico, and during three summers the men dug the great bones out of the arroyo bank. When the digging was finished, the men had recovered thirty skeletons of the long-extinct bison. But in addition, they had found something far more important. Among the bison bones they had discovered nineteen beautiful dart, or spear points. The points were so closely associated with the bones that there could be no doubt as to their antiquity. And, with equal certainty, there could be no doubt that ancient hunters had killed the great bison. All evidence indicated that a few thousand years ago this was a swampy, boggy place, a bison wallow. Primitive hunters crept up on the drowsing animals and sometimes made a kill. They skinned the bison, cut off what meat they wanted and left the carcasses to rot in the mud. Sometimes they failed to extract all of their dart points from the bodies of the bison. As the centuries passed the bones became deeply covered with earth and there they remained until that fateful day when Nigger George rode by.