25 Years of Wonder at the Sam Noble Museum

The building’s largest doors open off the loading dock, but they are not really that large. Moreover, they open into hallways, which are large enough to move furniture and most exhibits, but a mammoth? As the tractor trailers moved into the loading dock area several things became immediately clear. 1) The bronze mammoth was articulated, which meant it had its legs, head, ears and whole body. The tusks were separate. The mammoth without the tusks weighed 6,000 pounds!

We had a mammoth problem.

The mammoth sat on the truck awaiting a strategy. A giant bronze mammoth attracts visitors and soon newspeople were buzzing around like flies. I was told that word was getting back to New York City and the Today Show was thinking of doing a story about the museum’s mammoth problem and might send someone tomorrow.

I could just imagine all sort of dumb Okie jokes, museum people who ordered a mammoth that turned out to be too large to get into their new museum.

Not on my watch. I called my staff and the construction workers together and told them we had to get that mammoth into that building by nightfall. Again paraphrasing NASA on Apollo 13, Failure was not an option.

First problem, even if we got the mammoth into the hallway, it was too large to make the turns required to get to the front galleries. If we got it into the back hallway, the only way into the galleries was through the elevator. With its rolling undercarriage it weighed more than the elevator could hold. Se we decided to get railroad ties and build a structure under the elevator in the elevator shaft that could withstand the mammoth’s weight. Then we lowered the giant freight elevator onto the railroad ties. We had to do one other thing to make this happen. We had to cut the legs off of the mammoth! An acetylene torch was brought out, the crane lifted the mammoth into the air, and the legs were cut off at the body.

We now had a legless, tuskless mammoth that weighed perhaps 5,000 pounds. Now we could begin.

We were able to locate three carry deck cranes that could work in tight places.

We had to lay thick plywood sheeting from the back hallway and across the Brown Gallery and most of the Great Hall so as not to damage the beautiful terrazzo floor that had just been laid.

Then the ballet began, with lots of human power, heavy machinery, and the will to make it happen, to not admit that we could not do this thing that had never been done before, at least as far as we were aware.

A crane lifted the mammoth to the loading dock level and it was placed on the wheeled undercarriage. Then we began to push it and pull it through the elevator, and the elevator floor held! The mammoth did not pitch into the elevator shaft. Then it was on through exhibit storage, the Brown Gallery and, finally, into the Great Hall. The terrazzo seemed fine and the three small cranes were also helping pull the mammoth and keep it off the floor.

In the middle of the Great Hall, we had room to position the three cranes to lift the mammoth off the carrier. The three cranes began a type of ballet with each one attached to the now floating mammoth trying desperately to keep it in the air and not let it crash to the floor. Inch by inch we worked the beast toward the South Rotunda. It was amazing to see the three cranes coordinating their work. It was slow but steady work. Periodically everyone would stop and gather to discuss how to proceed, the mammoth floating in the Great Hall before them.

Ever so slowly we reached the South Rotunda. Then things got interesting. How does one lift the mammoth into place? Thus far it was positioned on its side. Again, there were discussions. Eventually the three cranes put themselves into a position where they could rotate the mammoth into more or less a standing position. Now we could solder the legs back onto the beast. So we did. Eventually the mammoth got its legs back, with many scars from the torch. The tusks were also soldered onto the animal. Now it again weighed more than 6,000 pounds and was ready to stand for eternity in the South Rotunda’s center.

But wait! Before you remove all the cranes, let’s be sure it can stand on its own without toppling. So a giant leather collar was rigged for the mammoth and placed around its neck. One of the taller cranes held it by the collar as it was lowered to the floor.

The mammoth has its right forefoot raised. Kids love sliding under it and having their picture taken. As we released two of the cranes, the mammoth stood for a few seconds then toppled toward the raised front foot! The crane held it by the collar around its neck. Good thing no one was under the foot!

Now what? Another discussion with contractors and museum people. We decided the mammoth would never stand unless it were anchored to a very strong support. But how? Where? There was only one place it could be attached we decided after examining construction documents, blueprints, and so on.

So we brought in the jackhammers and broke up our beautiful terrazzo floors, then broke up the concrete slab under the floor all the way to the thick rebar of the supporting base slab of the building. The mammoth was raised to swing once again for the last time in the air over the floor. A support structure was designed to go through the foot and into the body of the animal and the steel structure was anchored to the steel rebar. Finally the animal could be lowered to the floor, attached to the very thick steel of the concrete pad, and stand solid and forever in the South Rotunda.

We re-stained the bronze of the legs and polished the whole animal. There were still issues. The tusks were unacceptable so I had to send a paleontological curator to Nebraska to oversee the casting of new tusks based on an actual mammoth from our collection. In less than a year the new tusks arrived, the old ones were removed, and the mammoth was now complete and accurate.

A few months later, the Native American family and their dog were installed to stand with fear near the giant beast, a scene that could have taken place in Norman, Oklahoma 10,000 years ago. The South Rotunda was now complete.

I reached the Today Show to tell them we had gotten the Oklahoma mammoth into the museum. They said in that case they were no longer interested in the story. Go figure.