Blackwater Draw is an intermittent stream channel about 140 km (87 mi) long, with headwaters in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, about 18 km (11 mi) southwest of Clovis, New Mexico, and flows southeastward across the Llano Estacado toward the city of Lubbock, Texas, where it joins Yellow House Draw to form Yellow House Canyon at the head of the North Fork Double Mountain Fork Brazos River.

In this period (1952 to 1970) Blackwater Draw was being commercially mined for gravel with a number of mammoth and bison kill stations being uncovered.

The Clovis-age artifacts are in association with the remains of extinct Late Pleistocene megafauna, including mammoth, camel, horse, bison, saber-toothed cat, sloths, and dire wolf that were hunted by the early peoples who visited the site.

[17] Two of the projectile points from Blackwater Draw were used as the type specimens to define Clovis chipped stone technology in the 1930s.

Investigations at Blackwater Draw have recovered protein residue on Clovis weapons, indicating their use as hunting and possibly butchering tools on extinct Pleistocene animals.

Towards the end of the Pleistocene period, the climate began to change, which brought warmer and drier weather, causing the water flow in the region to dramatically decrease.

In 2017, the museum moved onto the Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) campus, and expanded its focus to incorporate local history, as well as archaeology on a broad scale.

Visitors can learn more information about Blackwater Draw, archaeology, and see materials from the greater Southwest obtained from private collections.