Site identification and recording in the Planning Area dates to the mid 20th Century, when, in 1946, the Smithsonian Institution sponsored work as part of the River Basin Surveys for projects such as Anchor Reservoir in the Absaroka Mountain Slope and Owl Creek subregions and the Oregon Basin Reservoir in the Bighorn Basin subregion. Since the early 1970s, there have been extensive modern cultural resources investigations in the Planning Area. Most investigations have been accomplished in compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and provisions of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), both of which require federal agencies to consider the potential effects of federally assisted or permitted projects on important cultural resources. The BLM has performed cultural resources investigations in the Planning Area pursuant to the BLM stewardship responsibilities under NHPA Section 110, which requires federal land management agencies to identify and preserve important cultural resources on lands those agencies administer.
There appears to be a pattern of human use of the landscape that changes based on vegetation and other resource availability. The use of areas with less than 10 inches of annual precipitation appears to vary from the use of areas with more precipitation. Identified cultural subregions in the Planning Area include:
North Slope of the Bridger Mountains: Areas with vegetation patterns that indicate average annual precipitation of more than 10 inches along the northern margin of the Bridger Mountains.
North Slope Owl Creek Mountains: Areas with vegetation patterns that indicate average annual precipitation of more than 10 inches along the northern margin of the Owl Creek Mountains.
West Slope of the Big Horn Mountains: Areas with vegetation patterns that indicate average annual precipitation of more than 10 inches along the eastern margin of the Bighorn Basin.
East Slope of the Absaroka Mountains: Areas with vegetation patterns that indicate average annual precipitation of more than 10 inches along the western margin of the Bighorn Basin.
Bighorn Basin: Areas with vegetation patterns that indicate average annual precipitation of less than 10 inches.
Clarks Fork Basin: Areas within the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River drainage, which are included in the Yellowstone watershed, with vegetation patterns that indicate average precipitation of less than 10 inches. These areas are differentiated from the Bighorn Basin and surrounding East Slope of the Absaroka Mountains subregions.
Cultural resources investigations in the Planning Area have recorded approximately 8,340 prehistoric and historic cultural resources (Table 3–33).
Table 3.33. Cultural Resources Inventories, Sites, and Site Density in the Planning Area
| Subregion | Number of Surveys | Total Area Surveyed (acres)1 | Recorded Prehistoric Sites | Per Acre Occurrence of Prehistoric Sites | Recorded Historic Sites | Per Acre Occurrence of Historic Sites2 | All Recorded Sites | Per Acre Occurrence of All Sites | Overall Site Density3 |
| North Slope of the Bridger Mountains | 317 | 8,989 | 116 | 0.013 | 38 | 0.004 | 154 | 0.017 | 1 site in 58 acres |
| North Slope Owl Creek Mountains | 259 | 2,646 | 52 | 0.02 | 73 | 0.028 | 125 | 0.047 | 1 site in 21 acres |
| West Slope of theBig Horn Mountains | 960 | 43,401 | 509 | 0.012 | 58 | 0.001 | 567 | 0.013 | 1 site in 77 acres |
| East Slope of the Absaroka Mountains | 1,509 | 66,375 | 381 | 0.006 | 186 | 0.003 | 567 | 0.009 | 1 site in 117 acres |
| Bighorn Basin | 2,776 | 252,161 | 5,470 | 0.022 | 1,335 | 0.005 | 6,805 | 0.027 | 1 site in 37 acres |
| Clarks Fork Basin | 259 | 3,262 | 96 | 0.029 | 26 | 0.008 | 122 | 0.037 | 1 site in 27 acres |
| Planning Area Totals4 | 6,080 | 376,834 | 6,624 | 0.018 | 1,716 | 0.005 | 8,340 | 0.0222 | 1 site in 45 acres |
| Source: Wyoming SHPO 2009 1 May include some areas that have been resurveyed. 2 Total corrected for sites that have both historic and prehistoric components. 3 Rounded to nearest acre. 4 Wyoming Cultural Records Office database information current as of January 2009. | |||||||||
Prehistoric cultural resources are materials deposited or left behind prior to the entry of non-American Indian (European) explorers and settlers into an area. Protohistoric refers to the variable transition period from prehistoric to historic. The latter is the time after Europeans established a presence. The Prehistoric Period, subdivided into a number of subperiods (e.g., Paleoindian Period, Archaic Period, Late Prehistoric Period), began with the entry of human beings into North America sometime about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, or perhaps much earlier, according to recent data (BLM 2009b). The Protohistoric Period in northwestern Wyoming was initiated in the early 19th Century with the entry of fur trappers and explorers, although early French and British trappers might have passed through the general area in the early to mid 18th Century (BLM 2009b). The establishment of trading centers at Fort William (present-day Fort Laramie) and other trading forts on the Yellowstone and upper Missouri rivers in the early 1830s ushered in the Historic Period, because these were the first permanent European settlements in the region.
Most recorded prehistoric sites in the Planning Area consist of lithic scatters, campsites or habitations of various kinds, stone circles, and stone cairns. Other prehistoric site types include burials, ceremonial stone alignments, rock art, rock shelters, ceramic sites, quarries and secondary lithic procurement sites, hunting blinds, structures, and bison kill and butchering sites. Recorded historic cultural resources in the Planning Area include trails, freight wagon and stagecoach trails, an historic highway, early ranches and farms, stockherding camps, irrigation systems, mines, early oil fields and associated camps, railroads, bridges, and urban buildings. Some locations are noted, but not formally recorded, including utility lines, pipelines, stock dams, survey markers, carbanks or abandoned vehicles and appliances, rip-rap, fencing, recent trash, well and hole markers, culverts, bear baiting sites, unnamed two-track roads, and small-capacity irrigation canals with no historic association.
Native American prehistoric sites are listed in the Wyoming Cultural Records Office(WYCRO) database under 198 site types or characteristics. These can be grouped into 15 generalized or composite site types that are the most commonly occurring types in the Planning Area and the surrounding region, as follows:
Burials – physical human remains, deliberately interred or not.
Cairns – piles of stones deposited by prehistoric people for a variety of reasons and purposes, including stockpiling of lithic source materials, marking burials or other ceremonial events, or as locational markers for trails, water sources, or other resources.
Campsites – locations that contain evidence of at least short-term occupation by prehistoric people.
Ceramic sites – sites of any other type that contain prehistoric pottery.
Lodge sites/prehistoric structures/house pits – habitations or occupations that can include features such as stone and wood elements.
Hunting blinds or traps – structures built by prehistoric people to aid in hunting of big game such as bison, pronghorn, and possibly birds, and that these people might have used for ceremonial purposes.
Kill sites or butchering/processing sites – locations that contain extensive bone or other evidence of the killing and processing of big game by prehistoric, protohistoric, or early historic aboriginal people.
Lithic scatters – assemblages of flakes, tested or worked stone cores, roughly shaped pre-forms for tools, and sometimes finished tools that are the products of reduction of stone material into useable tools.
Quarries – primary procurement sources for lithic materials used by prehistoric people.
Rock art – includes pictographs or petroglyphs on rock faces or individual rocks.
Rock shelters or caves – naturally occurring recesses or overhangs that afforded prehistoric people protection from the elements.
Secondary lithic procurement sites – locations where glacial or stream actions have deposited lithic materials or where lithic materials have otherwise eroded from primary geological contexts.
Stone alignments and effigies – usually interpreted to be associated with ceremonial or spiritual activities, but some alignments could have been associated with big game hunting or possibly have been locational landmarks.
Stone circles – rings of rocks that might represent former locations of tipis or other structures, or might represent prehistoric ceremonial activities.
Other unknown – sites that have limited or no data that can be properly categorized. This category contains a small percentage (about 1 percent) of the recorded sites in the entire Planning Area.
Historic period resource types are also categorized according to descriptive types. Certain broad categories are commonly used, particularly for emigrant trails and expansion era roads. Most of the 123 site type or characteristic categories in the WYCRO database for the Planning Area can be grouped into 11 thematic or site type groups, as follows:
Burials and cemeteries – in the historic context, deliberately established burials, interments, and burial groupings such as cemeteries.
Historic debris – refuse scatters that cannot be directly associated with another category.
Homesteads/ranches – residences and outbuildings, fields and facilities associated with operation of a farm or ranch or, on occasion, with recreation or the tourism industry.
Irrigation-related sites – ditches, canals, pumps, or other debris or features directly related to irrigation projects.
Military sites – forts, camps, and battlefields, and transportation or communications features that can be directly related to military activities.
Mineral exploration and extraction – oil, gas, coal, and other mining location and associated features.
Stockherding – typically camps that are not principal ranches or farm headquarters and cairns that cannot be ascribed to some prehistoric or aboriginal activity.
Timber sites – typically service roads and structures associated with the timber industry. Specific buildings include sawmills.
Transportation/communications sites – trails, expansion era stagecoach and freight wagon roads, military roads, railroads, bridges, telephone and telegraph lines, and in some cases, powerlines.
Urban buildings – historic buildings in cities, towns, or villages not directly associated with other categories.
Other – a large number of historic sites for which the WYCRO database does not provide enough information to allow the sites to be assigned to another category. This category constitutes more than 25 percent of the historic site type representations for the Planning Area.
There are several areas designated as National Historic Landmarks, Archeological Landscape Districts, or Archeological Districts in the Planning Area.
The Paint Rock Canyon Archeological Landscape District includes an extensive archeological record of Native American use of this well-defined location. In addition to the research value of the archeological sites spanning thousands of years of use, the landscape contributes to the resource’s integrity and forms an essential part of the resource’s cultural value. The steep nature of the canyon limited human use of the area while providing access to lithic materials for tool manufacture and rock shelters for short-term habitation.
The Black Mountain Archeological District is another NRHP-listed grouping of exceptional cultural resources values, spanning from Paleoindian occupation to the Late Prehistoric.
Refer to Section 3.7.3 National Historic Landmarks, which addresses the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.