Search

Salt River Project (SRP) maintains the 500-kilovolt (kV) Coronado to Silverking transmission line that traverses the Tonto National Forest (TNF), Gila County, Arizona. To control encroaching vegetation, SRP plans to employ the use of a Slashbuster® - a brush cutting and mulching device mounted onto heavy excavating equipment. The proposed action, which has the potential to impose adverse impacts upon cultural resources, requires permitting from TNF and, as such, is an undertaking subject to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. Accordingly, SRP requested that EcoPlan Associates, Inc. (EcoPlan) conduct a cultural resource investigation in advance of the project. The survey was carried out under Special Use Permit MES290, issued to EcoPlan by TNF. This survey report was prepared to provide documentation of the cultural resources identified within the project area for SRP submittal to TNF. We assume that, per the terms of the Region 3 First Amended Programmatic Agreement Regarding Historic Property Protection and Responsibilities, TNF will provide the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) documentation of this survey report in its annual listing of undertakings for which TNF recognized findings of "no historic properties affected."

An intensive archeological survey of about 7.7 mi. of Salt River Project (SRP) Coronado-Silverking 500 KV transmission line easement extending from just east of the Sitgreaves National Forest to the APS-SRP Joint Corridor was conducted by Museum of Northern Arizona archeologists in December, 1977. The survey was requested by Bettina Rosenberg, SRP Archeological Administrator, in a letter dated December 12, 1977. The survey was conducted and this report prepared under the stipulations and guidelines of the Cultural Resources Plan developed by the National Forest Service NFS) for the Coronado Project (1977). At the time of the survey, tower locations had not been plotted; therefore, the survey area consisted only of the 200 ft. right-of-way corridor. After tower locations have been determined as a result of consultations between SRP and the NFS, an archeological team will return to the field and survey the access roads and a 200 ft. radius around each tower. Field collection was not permitted by the Forest Service during this survey, so that in-depth lab analysis of the sites was not possible. Also, site interpretation on the basis of survey alone is usually questionable. However, background material concerning the environment and culture history of the project area may be found in the Environmental Impact Statement for the Coronado Station (Dames & Moore 1976).

During 1974-1978, the Museum of Northern Arizona conducted an extensive archaeological mitigation program for the Salt River Project prior to the construction of the Coronado Generating Plant near St. Johns, Arizona, and its energy corridors, the Coronado-Silver King Transmission Line and the Coronado Coal Haul Railroad. Lithic material from those corridors was separated from remaining project data and is reported herein. Objectives of this study are identification and description of all lithic material collected; the recognition of basic morphological and technological differences not related to specific raw material attributes, and additionally, whether such differences refer to specific cultures, time periods, or regions. Therefore, emphasis has been placed on the distributional analysis of raw materials in order to determine whether they were available on or adjacent to the sites, or transported there. Also, an effort has been made to describe the characteristics of material types as they affect flaking quality. Certain methodological considerations applicable to lithic analysis are investigated, including a wide variety of project-specific conditions and processes affecting both the nature of the assemblages available for analysis and the manner in which artifact analyses were undertaken. Among these considerations are theoretical assumptions subject to either verification or repudiation; collection and sampling techniques which were utilized, their extreme variability from site to site, and the effects of this on the validity of statistical inferences; and classification problems which had to be resolved. In this report the lithic material is first described and identified according to mineral type, i.e. chert, chalcedony, etc., with a discussion of geographic distribution. Next is classification by artifact type, and finally, lithic assemblages from individual sites are discussed in detail, with raw data from each site presented in tabular form.

In accordance with the NFS guidelines in the Cultural Resources Plan for Coronado Project (1977) and the recommendations listed in the main body of this report, a monitoring program was implemented on NFS lands in order to avoid damage to identified sites and to minimize accidental destruction of previously unrecognized resources. Museum of Northern Arizona Assistant Archaeologist Steve Dosh commenced the monitoring program on February 20, 1978. While the monitoring was in progress, Dosh resurveyed two tower access roads at the request of the NFS. Dosh conducted the survey according to the field procedures outlined in the main body of the report for the tower and access road survey. Bruce Donaldson, Apache-Sitgreaves Forest Archaeologist, Charley Miller, NFS-SRP Liason Officer, and Jerry Shelley, SRP Field Inspector, aided Dosh in the field. This is an addendum report.