PERMFILE68702

• Permit No: C1981038
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 12/11/2001
• Section_Exhibit Name: Volume 9B ARCHAEOLOGY APPENDIX Part 2 of 4
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

SDCTIGN I
• AN INi%)DUC.TION TO THE 1986 ORCHARD VAT.r.r•y MII~ STUDY PR,~C~RAM
Colorado Fk.stmoreland Inc. (CWI) has operated the Orchard Valley
Mine since 1976. The mine is an underground opal mine with its primary
portal at the central mine oortplex just north of Paonia (Figures 1, 2
and 3) , Delta County, Colorado. Since the late 1970's, the mine has
developed at this location by way of a series of leases fran the Bureau
of Land Management and fee coal properties. The surface area involved
in the operation is sore 6,000 or more acres. The most recent expansion
of the mine was in 1984 when CWI was granted access to about 5,000
additional acres in lease C-37210. An underground coal mining and
reclamation permit from the Colorado Mined land Reclamation Division
(CMLRD) and the Office of Surface Mining (06M) allowed CWI to include
the new lease area within its operating permit area (Figure 3).
~ On June 1, 1986, the portal of the Orchard Valley Mine caught fire
and opal mining ceased. Plans were soon initiated to establish a new
portal so that opal. m; n;nq could be resumed. Centuries Research, Inc.
was retained in June of 1986 to conduct a Class III or one-hundred
percent cultural resource inventory of an 880 acre study azea somewhere
i within which the new portal was expected to eventually be sited. 7.'his
area (Figure 4) was initially designated as the area of undertaking for
~q~liance with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966
(36CFR800). As planning for the new portal developed over ttie summer of
. 1986, the project was scaled doom. The final boundaries of the area of
• undertaking changed and a maximun area of only 20 acres was selected by
CWI. 44~e relationship of the initial and final areas of undertaking are
shown in Figure 4. The baseline cultural resource inventory reported on
here does, however, pertain to the entire 880 acre study tract. In
addition to the portal development area, this report discusses an
inventory of a water line to be constructed in association with the ne.+
portal (Figure 4) . The inventories were initiated in order to meet the
procedural requirements of the Office of Surface Mining and Bureau of
land Management relative to granting of the permit for construction of
the new portal. These procedures vary among Federal Agencies, but are
rooted in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (36CFR800).
Steven Baker of Centuries was designated as the Principal Investigator
~ and Field Director for the 1986 inventory.
The project azea had been subjected to inventories of various
intensity since 1976. Portions of the area in the Stevens Gulch
drainage wire inventoried in 1976 as part of the original Orchard Valley
Mule baseline studies (Baker 1977). A sale archaeological survey
trat~sect, conducted in conjunction with the 1978 hiest Central Coal
E.I.S. study, also extended through the study area (Hibbets, Grady et
al. 1979). Sm311 portions of the area oere also evaluated ahead of core
drilling operations in 1980, 1982 and 1986 (Flesert 1980 and 1981;
~~~ebster 1582).
During the sumrer of 1984, a substantial portion of the 1986 study
area was subjected to its first cultural resource inventory. This
I . focused on ttie previously unsurveyed portions >n Section 23 and the