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CONTAINS PRIVILEGED INFORMATION-DO NOT DISTRIBUTE <br />1 <br />INTRODUCTION <br />Mountain Coal Co., LLC (Mountain Coal) is proposing to mine three subsurface longwall panels (Panels 10 – 12) at the West Elk Mine in Gunnison County, Colorado. The proposed work does not include any direct surface disturbances, but there is some potential for surface subsidence related to the proposed panel mining. Because the project is federally authorized and extends across lands managed by the United States Forest Service-Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, Gunnison National Forest (USFS-GMUG NFs) and the Bureau of Land Management-Uncompahgre Field Office (BLM-UFO), various cultural resource laws apply. Federal mandates for the examination of the project area include Section 106 (54 U.S.C. § 306108) of the National Historic Preservation Act (54 U.S.C. § 300101 et seq.). These laws require that all significant cultural resources be identified prior to the planned development, and are intended to ensure that historical and prehistoric cultural resources important to our national heritage are not inadvertently harmed or destroyed by federally initiated or authorized actions. To comply with these laws, Mountain Coal retained Alpine Archaeological Consultants, Inc. (Alpine) of Montrose, Colorado, to conduct a literature review and an intensive pedestrian cultural resource inventory along the project’s Area of Potential Effect (APE) and survey area. Alpine’s inventory examined 602 acres of land, including 431 acres of lands managed by the USFS-GMUG NFs, 170 acres of private land, and 2 acres of lands managed by the BLM-UFO. The cultural resource inventory took place from July 11–16, 2023, led by Project Director Joshua R. Boyd and assisted by archaeologist Pete Davis. Sara A. Millward served as the project’s Principal Investigator. Aaron Goldman performed the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) work on the project and Jessica D. Starks completed the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (OAHP) cultural resource site forms. Megan Carney Reed was the technical editor for the report. The work was performed in accordance with maps provided by Mountain Coal. Field notes and photographs resulting from the inventory are on file at Alpine’s office in Montrose, Colorado. No artifacts were collected during the project. <br />Project Description <br />Mountain Coal is proposing to mine three subsurface longwall panels at the West Elk Mine. Mining will not entail any proposed surface disturbances within the APE. The cultural resource inventory is being conducted largely in advance of any possible future subsidence of the area above the proposed panels. Alpine inventoried the full extent of the APE. <br />LOCATION AND ENVIROMENTAL SETTING <br />The project area is 7.5 miles (mi.) east of the town of Paonia, in Gunnison County, Colorado (Figure 1). The project is above and south of the North Fork Gunnison River, in uplands north of Minesota Reservoir (Figure 2). The APE has great vertical range with elevations ranging from 7,300–8,100 feet (ft.) (Figure 3 and Figure 4). The project area is on mapped deposits of the Cretaceous-aged Mesaverde Group sandstones and shales (Tweto 1979). Vegetation in the project area comprises a dense shrub ecosystem that includes Gambel oak, chokecherry, snowberry, serviceberry, mountain ash, and mahogany on the slopes, along with various tall grasses and forbs. The border of the Horse Gulch drainage has an aspen woodland forest. The project area is located directly north of Minnesota Reservoir in the upland draws and ridges that drain the steep sloped Horse Gulch, Slide Gulch, and Pond Gulch (Figure 5). The ridgetops are mostly covered in patches of grasses (Figure 6) with occasional trees and the draws typically had dense thick grasses with sharp transitions to dense vegetation on the boundaries (Figure 7). The steep slopes of the APE are covered in dense thickets of Gambel oak, hawthorn, service berry, and other various plants (Figure 8).