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<br />CULTURAL RESOURCE BACKGROUND <br />EXLSTING DATA <br />The study area has been previously described in Spath (1993:3) as follows: <br />The project area is located in an azea of effective overlap of the West-Central <br />' Colorado Prehistoric Context (Reed 1987) and the Colorado Mountains <br />Prehistoric Context (Gutherie, et al., 1984). Neither study area has yielded <br />evidence of frequent prehistoric use of the scrub oak vegetation zone during any <br />of the prehistoric time periods. The earliest documented historic visit to the <br />general azea was the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 that passed along <br />' the North Fork of the Gunnison (Wazner 1976:29). The azea was within the range <br />of Euro-American fur trapping activities in the eazly 1800s and was later <br />influenced by ranching, fruit fazming and the expansion of coal mining (Mehls <br />' 1982). Historic activities in the azea that would leave more than limited, <br />transitory traces have generally centered along the river valleys. <br />' A total of fifteen cultural resource reports were identified for the vicinity of the proposed Jumbo <br />Mountain Tract (Table 2). The previous reports date from 1977 to 1993. Only three of the <br />reports (all negative findings) cover field studies (for proposed drilling operations) conducted <br />on the Jumbo Tract property (Metcalf Archaeological Consultants 1992; Spath 1993a, 1993b). <br />A 1977 study (Class II and Class III) of the adjacent West Elk Mine covered approximately 350 <br />acres and located two historic sites. The remainder of the studies aze located within a 2 to 3 <br />' mile vicinity of the study area. The most notable common characteristic of these previous <br />studies is the negligible amount of cultural resources recorded. In a total of 15 projects only 2 <br />historic sites and 1 isolated artifact have been recorded. Based upon these findings and given <br />the similazity of the topography and vegetation within the Jumbo Tract, it appeazed likely that <br />few, if any, cultural resources would be located within the Jumbo Tract. <br /> <br />1 <br />1 <br /> <br />1 <br /> <br />