The original settler name for the location was Hog Back , [ 4 ] [ 5 ] with a railway station first established there with that name in Hog Back was the local name for the high limestone and chalk ridge that runs from just west of old Fort Hays to Ellis.
These bluffs are the local outcrop of the Fort Hays Limestone. Yost , leading businessman and miller of Hays , [ 11 ] Yocemento is one of the several communities around the outskirts of the High Plains that were founded to use Fort Hays Limestone to manufacture Portland cement. The earliest studied human occupation of the Yocemento location is a settlement interpreted as the rarely preserved Early Ceramic c.
This phase is evidenced by particular shards of Harlan Cord-Roughened ceramic jars, chipped stone tools including well-made, small, corner-notched arrowheads , charcoal, bone tools, and mussel shell middens found along the high, steep banks of Big Creek just west of Yocemento. Dating to about CE, it is interpreted as a butchering and tool working site: Animal bones include bison, deer, and small mammals.
The on-site manufacture of stone tools included heat treatment of quartzite, flint, silicified Smoky Hill Chalk , and silcrete. Given that no evidence of permanent occupation has been found here, the site is considered to have been a warm season hunting camp.
By the early 19th century, however, the Pawnee had a large seasonal hunting camp 11 miles to the south with the Pawnee Trail passing nearby to the east. However, by the time of the first United States settlements here in the midth century, the Pawnee had diminished and the general territory was under the claim of the Kiowa and Comanche to the south and west and, more significantly, the Cheyenne and Arapaho to the north and west.
