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Cultural Resource Projects
Baca Land Exchange Cultural Resource Investigations
Project Description:
The 2004 establishment of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve requires land exchanges between several federal agencies and the State of Colorado.
RMC Consultants, Inc. contracted with the National Park Service to conduct the cultural resource investigations necessary for compliance with federal historic preservation laws.
This ongoing, long-term project includes review and / or participation by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Colorado State Land Board, and the Office of the State Archaeologist.
The Baca Land Exchange parcels are located across a broad portion of south-central Colorado. They include 39,248 acres in Fremont, Saguache, and Conejos Counties, in the vicinities of Penrose, Salida, La Garita, and Centro, Colorado.
Project Achievements:
- Conducted Class I overview summarizing the regional history and previous cultural resource investigations in the study area.
- Used GIS to evaluate historic and recent land use in the study area using multiple data sources, including digital orthophotos, stereo photo pairs, historic maps, and topographic maps.
- Used GIS to model archaeological sensitivity using environmental variables and previous inventory results.
- Conducted intensive cultural resource inventory of 13,381 acres.
- Documented and evaluated over 500 resources in a level of detail that exceeds federal and state standards.
- Analyzed hundreds of artifacts and included these results in the inventory reports.
- Conducted spatial analyses to explore patterns of association between site locations and environmental variables.
- Authored inventory report that provides detailed descriptive and synthetic data for an area of Colorado in which modern archaeological data were previously lacking, thereby contributing significantly to the understanding of Rio Grande Basin prehistory.
- Presented inventory results at the annual meetings of both the Colorado Archaeological Society and the Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists.
RMC is writing the treatment plan that will provide the basis for mitigating the adverse effects of the land exchange on significant cultural resources. We will implement this plan upon its approval by the appropriate state and federal agencies.
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