The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1918 - John from The Boneyard Alaska
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Alaskan Miner Unearths Unprecedented Ice Age Graveyard, Guards Its Secrets
- Former collegiate swimmer and gold miner John Reeves recounts his wild path from Florida to Alaska, where he eventually became the largest private landowner in the state and stumbled onto an extraordinary Ice Age bone bed he calls The Boneyard. On just five acres of permafrost, his family has uncovered hundreds of thousands of Pleistocene fossils—mammoths, steppe bison, dire wolves, short‑faced bears, American lions, rare horses, and more—many species experts claimed never lived in that region. Reeves explains how hydraulic mining techniques expose the bones, why scientists are stunned by the density and diversity, and why he has largely refused academic access, instead stockpiling the collection himself. He also reveals that tens of thousands of similar Alaska bones sent to New York’s American Museum of Natural History were later dumped into the East River, and publicly pinpoints the alleged location, openly inviting a modern-day “bone rush.”
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasOne small Alaskan valley holds a uniquely dense Ice Age bone deposit.
On roughly five acres, Reeves’ family has pulled out a quarter million fossils and thousands of mammoth tusks and skulls, making it likely the most concentrated late-Pleistocene vertebrate site of its kind, with another nearby creek showing similar promise.
The Boneyard is reshaping assumptions about which species lived in interior Alaska.
Finds include dire wolves, American lions, short‑faced bears, Harrington (stilt‑legged) horses, elk, badgers, and steppe bison—animals many experts had asserted did not inhabit that region during the Ice Age, forcing revisions of paleontological maps and timelines.
Most of the collection remains unsorted and undated, representing massive unrealized scientific potential.
Only a handful of specimens have been carbon-dated (roughly 3,000–22,000 years old); fully dating and cataloging the hundreds of thousands of bones could cost tens of millions, so Reeves continues to collect but leaves systematic analysis for future researchers.
Ownership and control of fossils can create deep friction between private landowners and institutions.
Reeves’ company legally owns fossils on its patented land, but past experiences with the American Museum of Natural History—where ~500,000 of his company’s historic bones were shipped, underreported, and some allegedly dumped—have made him wary of sending anything out of Alaska.
Hydraulic mining methods inadvertently enable high-volume fossil recovery from permafrost.
By using powerful water cannons to wash 60 feet of frozen silt (muck) off gold-bearing gravels, Reeves exposes the muck–gravel interface where most bones lie, then hand-recovers them as they thaw and slump, turning a gold operation into a parallel paleontological harvest.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesA lot of those animals, they say, never lived up there during the Ice Age. I just say, ‘Well, they sure as fuck died here.’
— John Reeves
If I was to sample my entire collection today, it’d cost $100 million. We have close to a quarter million fossils now.
— John Reeves
I’m not a scientist. All I can do is tell you where they’re at. If you wanna go find them, go find them.
— John Reeves
You’ve got this five-acre patch of land that’s yielded dire wolves, short-faced bears… one of the greatest historical sites in all of paleontology.
— Joe Rogan
Those bones that they dumped in the East River, as far as I’m concerned, they’re no longer mine. They’re finders keepers.
— John Reeves
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