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Western Colorado are usually cur~ted at the Museum of Western Colorado <br />in Grand Junction. <br />• In the case of historic Euroanrerican artifacts and sites, a <br />different procedure is generally used by Centuries. This involves <br />recognising relatively recent and conunon cultural resources and often <br />times not recording them. Such resources must be clearly younger than <br />50 years old and lack historical, societal, or scientific importance. <br />This policy is similar to that routinely used by the Rocky Mountain <br />Region of the U.S. Forest Service in inventory efforts by that agency <br />and permitted consultants working on Forest Lands. In practice, this <br />allows for excluding from recording recent trash dumps, many historic <br />isolated finds, and recent occupation sites. As will be discussed, this <br />policy did result in excluding some recent elements of the greater <br />Somerset town area from formal recording. <br />Snow Cover Documentation <br />Prior to initiating the inventory on December 4, 1990, k'estern <br />Colorado received a substantial snowfall. following this snow, the <br />inventory was delayed for approximately two weeks until enough melting <br />and drying had occurred to allow for appropriate ground visibility. By <br />December 4th, the hillside and cliffs of the project area were mostly <br />free of snow and Centuries was asked to proceed with the inventory by <br />Somerset Mining Company. On De reinber 4, 1990, Centuries found that the <br />undisturbed cliffs and hillside of the study area was approximately 85 <br />to 90 percent tree of ;now and yround visibility could be described as <br />"generally good." Figure 3 illustrates snow conditions of December 4th <br />• and supports this state~r~ent. <br />Cultural Context and Previous Mork in the Study Area <br />Prehistor} <br />The previously referenced site file searches of the site records at <br />the SHPO's office indicated that only two previous inventories had been <br />completed in the involved section (8 and 9) for the Sanborn Mine <br />Portals. The first of these was an inventory by the Colorado Department <br />of Highways in 1977 (Royster 1977'). This project was conducted in <br />association with upgrading of Highway 133 and resulted in the recording <br />of two resources. These were the town and cemetery of Somerset, both of <br />which were designated 5GN15fiU. The other inventory was undertaken by <br />Fort Lewis College -in 1977 or. behalf of the Mt. Gunnison Mine No. 1. <br />This resulted in the recording of two additional sites. These were the <br />townsite of Oliver and the Oliver Powerplant (5GN254 and 5GN1494) which <br />is an historic grave. Although outlying elements of the town of <br />Somerset were suspected because symbols for houses and industrial <br />facilities showed 'on fire to{.~ographic map (Figure 2), tfre other <br />previously recorded sites were all found to lie outside of the project <br />area where they would not be impacted by proposed portal developments. <br />Figure 2 shows all the known cultural resources in relation to the study <br />area. Data provided to J. E. Stover by the Montrose District BLM Office <br />indicated that a number of inventories had been conducted in sections to <br />the north of sections 8 and 9 and that at least a few of these resulted <br />6 <br /> <br />