Malakoff Man

Duane's take

The marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Now, Henderson County has got its share of stories, but this one reaches back further than most folks are comfortable thinking about. Way back before the word Texas meant anything to anybody.

It was 1929. Workmen for the Texas Clay Products Company were doing what workmen do — digging, hauling, not expecting much — when somebody's shovel met something it wasn't expecting. Down in a gravel pit, sixteen and a half feet below the surface, they pulled up a sandstone carving of a human head.

Ninety-eight pounds of it. Sixteen inches by fourteen inches, with eyes two and a half inches wide, staring up at the men who'd just disturbed what had to be a very long rest. Now think about that for a second.

Prehistoric hands shaped that face. Carved it from sandstone. And then the earth swallowed it whole, and there it sat — until the Texas Clay Products Company came along and the ground gave it back.

That gravel pit, by the way? It's under Cedar Creek Lake now. The whole thing.

Gone beneath the water like the past tends to go. But the story wasn't finished in 1929. In 1935, workers unearthed a second similar image in the same area.

Then in 1939, a third. Three faces, carved by prehistoric men, pulled from the same patch of Henderson County ground across a span of ten years. Archaeologists call them the Malakoff Men, and they date them as many thousands of years old.

Many thousands. That's the kind of number that makes the mind go a little quiet. And it wasn't just the carvings down there in that gravel.

Found near the images were fossil remains of extinct horse, elephant, and camel species. Not the animals we know — extinct ones. The kind that haven't walked this ground in an age so distant it barely fits inside a human thought.

Somebody was here. Somebody who knew those animals, or at least shared a world with them. Somebody who picked up a piece of sandstone and decided a face was worth making.

The three images rest now in the Texas Memorial Museum, which seems right. Henderson County gave them up to the gravel pit, the gravel pit gave them up to the workmen, and now they sit behind glass somewhere, those wide stone eyes still open, still looking out at a world they've been watching change for many thousands of years. Makes you wonder what else is still down there, waiting on the next shovel.

What the marker says

A sandstone image of a human head-- carved by prehistoric men-- was found near here in 1929 by workmen of Texas Clay Products Company. It was dug from gravel pit now under Cedar Creek Lake. The carving weighed 98 pounds, was 16 by 14 inches, with eyes 2.5 inches wide. First stone was found at depth of 16.5 feet. Two similar images were unearthed in same area in 1935 and 1939. Archaeologists date Malakoff "Men" as many thousands of years old. Found near the images were fossil remains of extinct horse, elephant, camel species. Images now in Texas Memorial Museum.