Archaeologists are Looking at Land Sites Reservoir Might Flood
Chico Enterprise Record - 5/4/03
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

SITES - The bath-tub shaped sloping hills of Antelope Valley west of the town of Maxwell is one of several locations being considered for a new California reservoir.

In the valley, there are more cattle than people and one could drive for miles and miles without coming across another car on the road.

It's a long way before water leaders decide if the valley will someday be flooded, but the environmental review to compare the various locations being considered is under way.

Greg White is director of the archeological research program at Chico State University and supervises professionals and students working to find out what history lies beneath the surface in Antelope Valley.

The study area covers 40,000 acres. Crews have walked the land about 10-12 feet apart. Tribal members also took part in the surveys, White said.

No digs were conducted, just surface investigations. As the information is gathered someone will decide whether there are cultural resources that need to be explored further.

White said it's helpful to the tribes to learn about their ancestors, such as traditional plant and animal use, where they lived, etc.

Laws have evolved over recent years to respect the history when a project changes the landscape.

"State and federal law is explicit that it requires significant consultation with tribes," White said. "Tribes would advise and consent on those kinds of plans."

There are several locations where the clues of past use of the land is evident, White explained.

Members of the Southern Wintu tribe lived all over the valley before settlers arrived. Some of the locations were complex, with maybe 1,000-1,500 people, White said. They had huge mounds and ceremonial systems that showed "a distinct level of complexity and political integration," White said.

But disease swept through in the 1830s as Canadian and American fur trappers moved through the area.

The Antelope Valley was settled intensively in the 1870s and 1880s, and by this time the native population was weakened.

White and his crew have found a number of old homesteads where the settler couldn't make a go of it.

"Some are pretty poignant," White said, such as a shack that had been abandoned with a grave in the back.

One location has remnants of a commercial salt business run from the late 1880s to the early 1900s. The venture included drying vats, shaped like big barrels, held together with hoops. Water flowed from a spring, and then evaporated. Salt deposits were then chipped out and compressed into salt cakes, mostly for cattle, White said.

But that business failed after salt began to be made more cheaply in the San Pablo Bay.

A brownstone mine is at one area of the valley. In the later 1800s the stones were shipped by rail to San Francisco, where several important buildings were crafted from the rock.

A railroad connected the valley to Colusa.

From 1886 to 1915, the town of Sites boomed. With railroad access, about 200-250 people lived there year-round. There were small schools and several businesses.

"It was big enough there was a weekly column in the Colusa Sun about Sites happenings," White said.

During that time the fad was to go away to health spas and get away to the country. Visitors would travel by rail. The remnants of a hotel remain.

With the combination of the brownstone mine closing, salt provided cheaper elsewhere, and the end of the "spa era," the town dried up.

Decades later a fire swept through the valley and burned most of the buildings to the ground.

Later cattle ranches moved in.

The main archaeological finds from this era would be to dig up the basements. Outhouses and garbage dumps are also treasure troves to diggers.

By this time outhouses no longer smell and archaeologists can find things the original residents didn't want anyone to know about, such as liquor bottles. Searchers also find things such as pocket knives and coins that fell out of people's pockets.

Whether digs will occur will be decided in the future.

White said he amasses his information and then it is decided whether the location qualifies as a "national historical resource."

"If a deposit has integrity and potential to yield significant features that could tell us about culture, change or content, we'll make an argument it should be mitigated (dug up),"

There is the aspect that pressure to develop the area as a reservoir is speeding up the archaeological investigation, White said. But along the way a lot of really interesting things are being discovered.

From an educational perspective, it's great to have experiences for students who will build careers in archeology, White said.

He recalled his early days in archaeology in the 1970s when he spent his summer as a "dig bum." There wasn't large scale attention to archaeology and if work was done it was much like "jumping in front of a bulldozer" to find things before construction, he said.

But because of the passage of historical research laws, almost every construction job has funding to look into what is being built over.

This higher level of scrutiny was reached in the 1990s, he said.

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