In 1941, 15-year-old Val Keene Whitacre found the first known example of this distinctive early man dart point in a caliche quarry on Running Water Draw. In 1944, quarry workers uncovered a fossil bone deposit that drew notice from scientists surveying the geology of the Plains. The following year, a University of Texas archeological team that included Dr. E. H. Sellards and Dr. Alex D. Krieger excavated the site and found 26 man-made artifacts, including several of the points, alongside the remains of about 100 extinct bison, Bison taylori, about twice the size of modern species. The long flint point was then named for the site. The bone bed probably resulted from hunting by stampeding bison over a cliff and butchering the dead and crippled animals for food. After the cliff eroded away, silt covered the bones with 12 to 14 feet of deposit. When exposed, the bone bed was 62 feet long, up to 10 feet wide, and 1.5 feet thick. Radiocarbon dating indicates the site is 8,000 to 9,000 years old, and the Plainview point is found most commonly in the Great Plains region of North America, though it has also been located in Alaska and Mexico.