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~!-,; ~''' West Elk Drill Pads, Panels 16, 17, and ] 7S, Cultural Report shales of the Upper Cretaceous Mesaverde Formation. Local ridges and mesas aze capped by ~~` resistant Mesa Verde sandstone. Vegetation in the project azea is dominated by a mix of aspen and spruce on north facing and ;i;?S: `~'"' sheltered slopes, and Gambel oak mixed with woody brash in most other areas. Small meadows ~sw occur on ridgetops with very little soil and in poorly drained azeas along drainages. On north and ,c: '"' west facing slopes the trees and brush aze often dense and nearly impassible. P;, Historical land use in the area has been dominated by limited summer livestock grazing and ;,>% [~',, recreational hunting. CULTURE HISTORY AND PREVIOUS WORK A files search was conducted through the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (OAHP), and the files of the Grand Valley Ranger District were also consulted. Previous cultural resource projects in the area have included several linear corridors along the North Fork Gunnison River valley and numerous small drill pad and access surveys for stratigraphic cores and degas vents in the project vicinity. Few sites have been documented in the legal sections containing the project area or in nearby legal sections. These have included a few prehistoric isolated finds along the Dry Fork of Minnesota Creek. None of the known cultural resources are within the project area. The project area is in the western edge of the Colorado Mountains historic and the Gunnison River Unit of the Northern Colorado River Basin prehistoric RP3 Contexts (Mehls 1984; Reed and Metcalf 1999). The reader is referred to those documents for discussions of the general culture history and reseazch issues of the region. STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES Following state and federal policies and regulations implementing Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (Public Law 89-665) as amended, this project area was inventoried to identify any cultural resources within the APE of the proposed project. Any discovered cultural resources were to be evaluated for eligibility to the Register under the Criteria for Eligibility (36 CFR 060.4 a-d). Register eligibility is evaluated in terms of the integrity of the resource, and: (a) its association with significant events, or patterns in history or prehistory; (b) its association with the specific contributions of individuals significant in our past; (c) its engineering, artistic, or azchitectural values; or (d) its information potential for important research questions in history or prehistory. I'', Prehistoric resources are most often evaluated undei Criterion d, for their potential to yield ~.~ information important in prehistory. Significant information potential in a prehistoric site requires that the site contain intact cultural deposits or discrete activity azeas that can be securely associated ~" with a temporal period or discrete cultural group. The potential for intact deposits or ;; -~-- culturaUtemporal associations may be inferred from surface evidence of cultural features or undisturbed Holocene deposits, and the presence of temporally or culturally diagnostic artifacts. ~::,' Historic resources maybe evaluated under any of the Criteria, However, in the absence of structural ~`' features or documented association with significant historic events or the important contributions of ~~~= MtnCoalWestElkPanelslb-17-17SCult(210-50)rpt.doc -2- ~ ~ 10/29/2001 ~t 1 4