ROCKLIN -- The mysteries of the Hawver Cave are getting a little less mysterious, thanks to the efforts of Sierra College and the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

The school and state parks have worked together to display artifacts from the cave at the Rocklin college's library in a case designed and built by environmental resource specialist Gene Lorance.

The cave -- located about a mile east of Highway 49 on the El Dorado County side of the Middle Fork of the American River - is marking just more than a century since bones and fossils were first discovered by Auburn dentist J.C. Hawver in 1906.

Recent work has secured the cave's entrance from trespassing spelunkers and partiers, and Lorance is nearing completion of a book on the contents of the Dr. Hawver's cavernous discovery. More than 400 bones and fossils were pulled from the cave before limestone-mining operations ran a tunnel through the underground site in the 1910s.

The Sierra College display, located on the main-floor entrance to the library, provides a look at animals that once roamed the area and ended up breathing their last in the cave.

There's a jawbone of a bison and a small armor plate from a ground sloth. An Auburn woman who had retrieved a mammoth's tooth in the 1960s before it was thrown out at the Auburn Grammar School, recently contributed the artifact to the collection.

The tooth had rested half-buried in the woman's front yard as a prized lawn ornament until Lorance shed new light on the cave last November with a lecture in Auburn. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, came forward with the tooth as well as a beehive-shaped stalactite from the cave.

"The tooth was nicely preserved after all these years,' Lorance said.

Dick Hilton, professor of geology at Sierra College, worked with Lorance to bring the 10,000-year-old find up to display standards.

Lorance said his work has found him interviewing long-lost branches of Hawver's extended family and it's been rewarded with photos and documents of the Auburn man. Hawver was also a school district trustee and his display case, with artifacts inside, was donated to the Auburn school district he served.

The display case, now holding trophies, still belongs to the Auburn Union School District and efforts by Lorance - backed by Hawver family members - to allow the case to be used temporarily for an exhibit were rebuffed both by staff and trustees last spring.

"It's really a shame because it's now not being used for its original intent," Lorance said.

The Journal's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com, or post a comment at auburnjournal.com.