Dakota Datebook: Journey of the Highgate Mastodon

July 23, 2018 — In the spring of 1890, William Regcraft found some bones while digging a ditch on his uncle’s farm one mile from Highgate, Ontario. A hardware merchant named William Hillhouse bought the bones, and he and his uncle, John Jelly, also bought the right to continue excavation. What they found was almost an entire skeleton of an Ice-Age mastodon, a relative of the modern elephant.

Hillh...