The hammerhead was encased inside a rock formed millions of years ago, much older than the existence of any known civilization.

This mystery started coming to light in 1936, but it had a delayed reaction.  Max Hahn was out walking with a friend that year when they found a chunk of rock with a piece of old wood embedded in it.  The end was sticking out.  The location was the Red Creek area near London, Texas.  The rock was from the Cretaceous period.  Hahn took it home where it sat on a shelf gathering dust.

The friends got married and went about their lives.  A decade or so later, their curious little boy broke the rock open like an egg.  That is when the Hahn family discovered that the piece of wood was actually the handle of a hammer t encased in the stone.  The hammerhead was small, un-rusted, and similar to mining hammers of the 1800s.  It was made up of 96.6% iron, 2.6% chlorine, and.76% sulfur.

 The rock itself was formed millions of years ago.  It was much older than any civilizations existed—civilizations that could have been actively mining or making hammers.  How could the hammer have even gotten encased inside the ancient rock?

Years later, the artifact came to the attention of an individual, and an offer was made to purchase it from the Hahns.  The sale was agreed to in 1983.  The purchaser was an odd man, a minister, and, the artifact suited his own personal agenda.  He was a creationist named Carl Baugh.  Baugh labeled the artifact a “monumental pre-flood discovery.”  Baugh was interested in backing up his strange theory that the atmosphere of pre-flood Earth was the perfect climate for giants to emerge on the land.  Baugh began promoting this rock as The London Artifact.  He put it on display at his Creation Evidence Museum.

The Creation Evidence Museum was founded by Carl Baugh in 1984 in Glen Rose, Texas.  Baugh has put articles and artifacts in the museum that support his odd views and theories about creationism.  Many of the exhibits are scoffed at:  a fossilized human footprint, a petrified human finger, fossils of dinosaur prints alongside human prints—their origins are murky.

You may be familiar with the very authentic dinosaur footprints located at Glen Rose in the Paluxy River bed.  Well, one of Carl Baugh’s theories is that dinosaurs and human beings lived at the same time.  Maybe this is why Glen Rose was chosen as a site for his museum.  Maybe that, or maybe he hoped to draw off footprint visitors to his museum, to gain more followers for his movement.  Glen Rose is 180 miles northeast of London.

Baugh’s theories propelled him to have a hyperbaric biosphere built, and it is housed in his museum.  It is a chamber that he is convinced is able to reproduce the atmosphere on Earth that existed before The Great Flood.  Baugh was hopeful that the chamber would help them recreate dinosaurs.  He has tested fruit flies and snakes in the chamber. According to Baugh, the lifespans of the fruit flies tripled and copperheads became nontoxic.

1909 is the year that the 113-million-year old dinosaur tracks were discovered in the Paluxy River bed.  They became visible when a huge flood scoured the river bed.  Flooding in the area sometimes reveals even more dinosaur tracks.  The area used to be a seashore and there are thousands of tracks of various ancient beasts.

Throngs of human beings have come to see the dinosaur tracks—tracks that occur in forty Texas counties that were once part of the giant seashore.  At Glen Rose, a Dinosaur Valley State Park was created with displays and interactive programs.

Sadly, in the 1930s, when money became scarcer and scarcer, area citizens had decided to play to the tourists for some cash.  They made and sold fake fossils.  They made fake dinosaur prints, and they made fake human footprints alongside them.  All of this tainted the very genuine dinosaur tracks, mostly of three-toed theropods.

When Carl Baugh created his museum, it rankled the other branches of creationism. They did not like Baugh’s theories and considered them horrendous distractions to their cause.

All of the oddness connected to the museum has contributed to the London Artifact falling through the cracks.  It could have possibly had a different life.  It is a mystery for the ages.  It is so unique and perplexing that it might have been further examined, if not the property of a private individual.  It might have wound up in The Smithsonian Institution as a mind-boggling enigma, or at the very least, a lesson on quirky geological processes.

Sara Marie Hogg is the author of It Rises from the Pee Dee. Please click HERE to find the novel on Amazon.