Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401300073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEN DAVIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SALTVILLE LENGTH: Medium
They open presents at Christmas, eat turkey at Thanksgiving, watch fireworks on the Fourth of July . . .
And they rely on a huge, hairy prehistoric pachyderm to predict the arrival of spring on Groundhog Day.
While weather-watchers nationwide will be looking to Punxsutawney, Pa., for the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil to make his annual prediction Wednesday, folks here put on a one-of-a-kind pre-Groundhog Day celebration Saturday to honor their town's archaeological significance.
Welcome to the first Saltville Woolly Mammoth Day.
"Woolly, you've been around for over 13,000 years, so you've got a lot more experience than some old groundhog," said Mayor Frank "T-Bone" Lewis to the celebrity mammoth and a large gathering of its fans.
"Woolly," a 10-foot-tall, 20-foot-long mechanical woolly mammoth, was built six weeks ago of 24 discarded Christmas trees attached all around a 1969 International pickup truck.
Organizers designed Woolly as part of a fund-raising effort to build a museum that would reflect the history of the middle Appalachian region - an area whose history has been well-preserved through the town's archaeological findings.
"It would be an economic boon to our area, besides being a cultural, educational and archaeological center serving five states," Lewis said.
Museum supporters said they feel certain their vision for the proposed $15 million Museum of the Middle Appalachians will one day become a reality.
"We going to build this museum," said Carol Boone, president of the museum's fund-raising group, Friends Of The Saltville Foundation. "We aren't looking at this as if we might build it; we're looking at it as if we will build it."
Saltville - which has gained national renown in recent decades for being an archaeological Shangri-La - is an ideal locale for the museum, Boone said, because of the extensive fossilized findings that date back over 13,000 years.
"This is a fantastic area," she said. "The amount of fossils the lake and stream beds have preserved are an excellent record of our history."
But although Boone said the museum should be located in Saltville, she said it would serve a region far wider than the town limits.
"One reason this is important is because this is a regional museum, and not just Saltville," Boone said. "I don't think people realize what a regional scope it would have."
Boone said the public's overwhelming support has museum backers confident they can raise enough to help pay the museum's proposed $15 million price tag.
Judging by the scene Saturday morning, she was right.
Beneath a chalk-white sky, nearly 100 shivering spectators braved the early morning below-freezing temperature and paid $8 to glimpse the celebration's prehistoric main attraction.
They were not disappointed.
Like a huge Chia Pet on wheels, the mechanical mammoth moved its head and spewed water from its trunk as it lumbered past the town's only stoplight to where the crowd was gathered.
But although all seemed pleased with Woolly, a nod of his head gave a disappointing prediction of the length of the season:
Six more weeks of winter.
"To be honest, I hope he's wrong," Lewis said, shrugging off the chill of the mountain air.
Despite their disappointment, museum supporters agreed that if their mammoth's prediction differed from Punxsutawney Phil's, they would support Woolly.
"We're putting our confidence in his 13,000 years of experience," said Randolph Robertson, owner of the Salina Motel and Restaurant, where the Woolly Mammoth Day ceremony was held. "Besides, he's also got the weight advantage."
by CNB