Vore Buffalo Jump
— — a sinkhole the plains used as a tool.
Not only on a wall.
“A natural sinkhole in the grass near Sundance, Wyoming. For roughly three hundred years, from about 1500 to 1800, Plains tribes drove bison over the lip and butchered them at the bottom. Excavations recovered bones from an estimated 20,000 animals, stacked in layers. The site sits a short walk off Interstate 90 and is open in summer.
Vore Buffalo Jump, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Vore Buffalo Jump is a natural sinkhole in the rolling grassland between the Bear Lodge Mountains and the Black Hills, in Crook County, Wyoming. The depression formed by gypsum dissolution under the surface and opened as a roughly bowl-shaped pit about 200 feet across. From around 1500 to 1800, Plains peoples — likely ancestors of the Shoshone, Crow, Cheyenne, Lakota, and others — used the sinkhole as a communal bison kill site, driving herds over the rim. The site was identified in the 1970s during Interstate 90 surveys and is named for landowners Woodrow and Doris Vore.
Stratigraphy and projectile-point typology place active use at roughly 300 years, from about 1500 CE into the late 1700s. University of Wyoming excavations recovered bones from an estimated 20,000 bison stacked in distinct layers, each layer recording a separate communal hunt. The seasonal pattern points to autumn drives, when bison were at their fattest and meat could be dried for winter. The cultural record at the site spans the late prehistoric and protohistoric periods, ending shortly before the arrival of the horse fundamentally changed Plains hunting practice.
The interpretive site is open seasonally, typically from June 1 through Labor Day, with daily hours posted by the Vore Buffalo Jump Foundation. Access is from Exit 199 on Interstate 90, between Sundance and Beulah, on the old US 14 frontage. A short path leads to a covered viewing structure built over the sinkhole, where visitors can see the bone bed exposed in section. The foundation charges a modest admission. Sundance, 10 miles west, is the nearest town for fuel and food; Devils Tower lies an hour north.