On November 15th and 16th, 1991, nearly 40 avocational archaeologists and relic collectors gathered with a few professional archaeologists in Port Arthur, Texas to inspect, photograph, record and discuss prehistoric artifacts and fossil bones found at McFaddin Beach, 41JF50.  The conference was organized as a result of the combined efforts of Paul Tanner, a retired refinery foreman from Port Arthur who had searched the beach for some 15 years, Ellen Sue Turner, and Dee Ann Story.  For decades, the beach was known to local collectors as a locality where projectile points, stone tools and fossils could be found.  Tanner had invited archaeologists many times  to visit the site and the collections, but his invitations elicited little response until he contacted Sue.  At Tom Hester’s suggestion, Sue contacted Dee Ann and through the efforts of Tanner, Story and Turner, plus the cooperation and interest of the participating collectors, a conference came together.  All of the attending professionals (Dee Ann Story, Dennis Stanford from Smithsonian Institution,  Mike Collins, Tom Hester, Ken Brown, Larry Banks, Don Wycoff, Richard Weinstein, Roger Saucier and Charles Pearson) were truly impressed with the archaeological and paleontological finds.

The Gulf of Mexico is 30 miles further offshore than it was during the last Ice Age when a variety of animals, (as evidenced by the recovered bones we saw at the conference) mammoths, mastodons, camels, large bison, ground sloths, saber tooth tigers, etc. roamed the area.  Many of the artifacts were common to the Poverty Point culture of northeastern Louisiana, but the artifacts from Paleoindian cultures attracted the most interest.  We documented examples of San Patrice points in all stages of sharpening, Scottsbluff, Agate Basin, Early Stemmed and a single Folsom point (made of Boone chert from Oklahoma!), but the most outstanding artifacts were the nearly 100 Clovis points, typically made from Edwards Plateau chert, some exceeding a length of 120 mm. 

When Paul Tanner first contacted me, I sent copies of the El Paso Archaeological Society’s Projectile Analysis forms as a guide line for the collectors and asked that he send a copy of his filled out forms to TARL.  Tanner had been keeping detailed records of the artifacts he found since 1983, recording each find in a log book and plotting the artifacts on a map.  He encouraged and helped other collectors to do the same and then made sure that they sent copies to the TARL archives also.

Today there is little left of the beach, which has all but eroded away into the Gulf of Mexico.  In Melanie Stright’s doctoral dissertation, SPATIAL DATA ANALYSIS OF ARTIFACTS REDEPOSITED BY COASTAL EROSION: A CASE STUDY OF MCFADDIN BEACH, TEXAS, for the The Department of the Interior, 1999, she acknowledged her deep gratitude for Tanner’s help, hospitality and access to his collection and the collections of his friends,  Murray Brown, Joe Coen, Jessie Fremont and Joe Louvier.  Without Tanner’s help, she said, “there would have been no useable data upon which to base the study.”

Ellen Sue Turner
May 2002