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<br />points, and large side and comer-knotched points. Also common is the appearance of one- <br />handed manos and metates. Several Archaic period lithic scatter sites have been found in the <br />Sagers Wash area. <br /> <br />g The Archaic period was replaced by the Fremont Culture at approximately A.D. 450. The <br />W Fremont Culture were horticulturally-based although their material culture remains indicate that <br />-.J the Fremont were not completely sedentary, with hunting and gathering of wild resources <br />remaining a critical element of their subsistence activities. Fremont villages tend to be small <br />and located near penn anent streams on or neartJy hills. Architecture is characterized by masonry <br />surface structures and stone lined pit dwellings, . Ceramics include graywares and several <br />variations of black-on-white. The Turner-Look site, which may represent a southern extension <br />of the Uinta Fremont is located adjacent to the project area. Living in semi-subterranean houses <br />of dry-laid masonry, the inhabitants cultivated com and possibly squash. Archaeological <br />evidence indicates that the Fremont had withdrawn from eastern Utah by A.D. 1250. Sometime <br />following this abandonment, the region was occupied by the Numic-speaking Utes. With the <br />coming of Buro-American settlers about 1885, the Utes were displaced to northeastern Utah. <br /> <br />The fITSt documented visit to the Cisco Desert by non-aboriginals was the Dominquez-Escalante <br />Expedition of 1776, The northern route of the Old Spanish Trail, in use through the middle of <br />the 19th century, also ran through some portions of the Cisco Desert. The area was traversed <br />by trappers in the 1820s through 1840s, as evidenced by the Roubidoux inscription at the head <br />of Westwater Creek. Exploration and travel continued through the region. The most notable <br />historic period resource is the abandoned grade of the narrow-gauge Denver and Rio Grande <br />Western Railroad that traverses the project area in a sinuous manner from east to west. The <br />grade was constructed in the 1880's as part of the route from Denver through Grand Junction, <br />Colorado, to Price, Utah and on west. The route itself was surveyed in August of 1881 and the <br />tracks laid in March, 1883. The narrow-gauge grade was short-lived. When the system was <br />resized to a standard-gauge grade. The cattle industry predominated in the late 19th century, <br />but sheep grazing replaced cattle as the major land use around the turn of the century, <br />Exploitation of the oil and gas resources in the Cisco Desert was underway by at least the 1920s. <br /> <br />Prior to any surface disturtJing activities a Class I literature review should be completed to <br />evaluate the necessity for a Class III intensive cultural resource inventory. <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />25 <br />