Four woolly mammoths that once stood outside the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, and later the Cincinnati Museum Center's Geier Collections and Research Center, are moving to a new location. First, one will make its way through the streets of Cincinnati Thursday in the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade.
(New) Homeward bound
A rigging company recently lifted the four woolly mammoths from their home for roughly the last 20 years outside the Geier Collections and Research Center on Gest Street. They'll soon take up sentry outside the former Heidelberg Distributing facilities just north of the museum center on Dalton Ave, across from the U.S. Post Office.
"You'll be standing with your back to the post office, and you'll see them, the mammoths, looking like they're walking towards Union Terminal," says Elizabeth Pierce, president and CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center.
She expects the woolly mammoths will be installed in the first weeks of April, though fund raising and planning are still underway for the as-yet-to-be-named education and collections facility that will be constructed on the former Heidelberg site. That's not expected to open until late 2027 or early 2028, at the earliest. It will be used to consolidate the more than six million objects in the museums' collections, and the Gest Street location will be closed.
"These mammoths are like a touchstone memory point for people," says Pierce. "People remember the polar bear, they remember the cave."
The sculptures are life-size reproductions of woolly mammoths, which would have roamed this region of North America 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. The family consists of two adult and two juvenile mammoths. Each statue is constructed of a steel frame wrapped in fiberglass with bronze powder mixed into the gel coat to give them a mint green patina.
At 2,000 pounds for each adult and 800 pounds for each juvenile, the woolly mammoths weigh considerably less than their real-life counterparts would have.
Pierce says the woolly mammoths help tell the story of what was happening here thousands of years ago. They were drawn to the region by the salt licks, and then likely hunted by the people living here at the time.
She confirms the statues are indeed mammoths and not mastodons, another large, hairy, Ice Age animal. Mammoths are larger than mastodons, though both were distant cousins of modern-day elephants. The two creatures also differ in head shape, tusk style, and tooth structure.
Where did they come from? The statues, not real mammoths.
The four replica mammoths took about two years to create and were finished in 1980. According to an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer dated April 20, 1980, two of the mammoths were built by artists and scientists at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History for the outdoor display.
Artists Jay Bader and Sandra Toombs worked with scientist Charles Oehler on the two adolescent mammoths. The adult mammoths were constructed at a studio in Iowa, and installed near the Gilbert Ave. entrance to Eden Park on Wednesday, April 16, 1980.
Did I just see a mammoth in the Reds Opening Day Parade?
You sure did!
Before the woolly mammoths are installed at their new home on Dalton Street, one of the adult sculptures will march through the streets of Cincinnati in the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade.
Pierce says the woolly mammoth will have some special attire just for the occasion.
"We have a staff member whose mother is in a knitting group, and [the] knitting group is making fabulous red leg warmers for the mammoth. So he has red stockings on as he's in the parade," she says with a laugh.
"I just think it's a classic Cincinnati experience, where we have these incredible mammoths that represent the one of the world's oldest natural history museums — we're 200-plus years old — and they are ready to help the world's oldest professional baseball team kick off a great season," she concludes.
