The Waco Mammoth National Monument has seen more visitors this spring than ever before.
"So far in 2017, we've seen nearly 40,000 people. That's just in four months," Raegan King, Site Manager for the Waco Mammoth National Monument, said. "That is twice what we used to get in an entire year."
Springtime is their busiest season, especially with school groups.
King said the site typically sees one to three school groups a day. They recently had a group with 200 students.
Last week, the site had to stop booking tour groups from schools for the rest of the school year because they are so busy.
The site is still open for public tours seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
"I think the success of the Waco Mammoth National Monument is beyond anything we could have anticipated. We knew visitation would grow but the amount of growth here is staggering," King said.
King said they are working on making long-term plans for the site.
“The main goal here is to develop additional acreage in the park. Of our 107 acres, only 5 are federal property,” King said. “We definitely want to link our trail system to the parks and recreation master plan."
They also would like a larger visitors center, a paleo lab, and a fulltime paleontologist dedicated to the site to possible dig again some day.
“We are extremely busy, it's a wonderful problem to have,” King said.
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