DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Somewhere right here — in this very vicinity — the ground has been keepin' a secret. Several secrets, actually.
The kind that take a little patience to uncover. About ten thousand years' worth of patience, give or take a few thousand. In 1973, a team of Texas Highway Department archeologists found a prehistoric site right along Brushy Creek, and what they started pullin' out of that earth would rewrite what we thought we knew about who was walkin' this land and how long ago they were doin' it.
They called it the Wilson-Leonard Brushy Creek Burial Site, and brother, it earned that name. Scientific excavations turned up more than a hundred and fifty fireplaces — not one or two, not a dozen, but a hundred and fifty — which tells you this wasn't some passin' stopover. This was a major camping ground, a gathering place, a spot where prehistoric peoples kept comin' back during what archeologists call the Archaic Period, a stretch of time running from two thousand to eight thousand years ago.
They found numerous projectile Plainview points and several types of spear points scattered through that ancient earth, the kind of tools that speak to you across millennia without sayin' a single word. Now, the excavations were already somethin' to talk about. But then came 1982.
That's when archeologists discovered the skeleton of a human female estimated to be ten thousand to thirteen thousand years old. Ten to thirteen thousand years. She was given a name that suited this corner of Texas just fine — the Leanderthal Lady.
And that name landed, because she wasn't just old. She was a window. A woman who walked this ground back when the world was a fundamentally different place, preserved long enough for the earth itself to introduce her.
The ground around Brushy Creek had been holdin' onto that introduction for a very long time. Turned out it had a lot to say.
What the marker says
In this vicinity is a prehistoric archeological site discovered in 1973 by a team of Texas Highway Department archeologists. Scientific excavations have produced evidence that the site was a major camping ground for prehistoric peoples, particularly during the Archaic Period (2,000-8,000 years ago). More than 150 fireplaces, numerous projectile Plainview points, and several types of spear points have been uncovered. In 1982, archeologists discovered the skeleton of a human female, 10,000 to 13,000 years old, that became known as the Leanderthal Lady. (1985)