Utah Mammoth Museum Quest
My boss, Dylan Kirklin, and I tabling at an NHL Utah Mammoth game in Salt Lake City during their inagural season in 2025.
Nothing says perfect timing like the Natural History Museum of Utah asking if you have any mammoth specimens within a month or two of discovering a mammoth jaw fragment in your collection.
With the new mascot selection of Utah’s very own NHL team, the Utah Mammoth, museums across the state had a perfect opportunity to connect hockey fans with Utah’s rich natural history. Headed by the team at NHMU, natural history and science museums around Utah were scanned for mammoth specimens or exhibits that could be linked to the NHL team’s inagural season in Salt Lake City. Thanks to NHMU, a partnership with the Utah Mammoth was created which not only gave us small museums some attention, but an incentive to attend through the Utah Mammoth Museum Quest.
During this time, I had discovered some unidentified chunks of bone in our collections space at the Frehner Museum and a tag that simply said “Mammuthus columbi.” After a little bit of digging, it became clear that we had in our collection a Columbian mammoth jawbone, two teeth, and a tusk fragment. While the story of how it got to a tiny university museum is another story, it was perfect timing to qualify us as a partner in this Mammoth Museum Quest.
What we thought would just be our name on a “participating locations” map and a place to pick up a Utah Mammoth enamel pin turned into not one but two tabling opportunities at a NHL home game in Salt Lake. With hotels paid for and entrance covered, we got to rub shoulders with natural history museums great and small across the state and share our love of the iconic ice age animal with both Utah natives and rival team fans.
As a thank you, each museum received a small grant from the Utah Mammoth (if getting box seating at a game wasn’t already enough) with which we were able to purchase our own pair of tusk replicas for the Frehner. If we weren’t fans already, there’s only one team we’re cheering for in the Stanley Cup playoffs this season. Tusks Up!
