Where & how was she discovered?

Finding a Body Beneath the Soil

An Historic Archeological Discovery at an Ordinary Construction Site

In 1929, construction commenced on 28 miles of gravel road between Pelican Rapids and Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. To accommodate the project, more than nine feet of soil were removed from a hill near Prairie Lake, a short distance north of Pelican Rapids. The road was graded and then covered with two feet of gravel, high in the center and sloping toward the edges for purposes of moisture runoff.

During the winter/spring of 1930-31, the yellow clay-silt soil beneath the road retained moisture that froze, thawed, and then heaved into a 600-foot-long frost boil. That June, a crew began removing the boil and fixing the road surface. (Ironically, a letter had been sent to the State Commissioner of Highways asking him to alert his road bosses and road crew workers to be on the lookout for possible skeletons along the route.)

As a grader was removing the frost boil, crew member Carl Steffen noticed what he later described as a “white shimmering glow.” Steffen stopped the grader, dug into the clay with his bare hands and uncovered a skull and pieces of clam shell reflecting the sun’s bright rays. He and co-worker Eugene Russell continued digging – and, in the process, unearthed a human skeleton.

Reconstructing History with Bones and Lost Artifacts

They moved the skeleton to the side of the road and reassembled the bones as they’d found them. An assortment of artifacts, found with the skeleton, were laid beside it. Among the artifacts were an elk horn dagger or scraping tool, clam shells – and, most curiously, part of a conch shell whose native habitat is along the coast of Florida. Found during additional digs were a tooth (later identified as from an eastern timber wolf), a metatarsal from a juvenile loon, a Painted Turtle carapace (upper shell), numerous bird and animal bones and bone tool fragments.

This momentous discovery was quickly reported to Dr. Jenks, the then-chairman of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Anthropology. Away on another dig at the time, Jenks sent a colleague, geologist Dr. C.F. Stauffer, to Pelican Rapids. Stauffer examined the site, wrapped the bones within crunched-up newspapers and sealed them in a carton for transport to Minneapolis.