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Lnrenci(o Conyan dLne Canour Curr Cultural Xesourcet /rtrerstory <br />' loadout area, the railroad spur corridor, the eastern portion of the P3 haul road corridor, and the <br />eastern edge of the surface mine area. A(( of these areas were pan of the I996 cultural resource <br />survey (McKibbin et al t997), and a few of them wire tested in 1997. The areas with the highest <br />densities of known sites are in the original loadout area and the loadout area on southeast facing <br />benches and slopes. These previously surveyed areas of high site density overlap with the <br />proposed contour cut areas, and where they overlap, no ne.v survey will be needed. From the <br />results of the previous survey, it is expected that three or four sites will be found an the <br />unsurveyed bench area west of the loadout, and that very few sites or isolated finds will be <br />discovered on the steeper slopes in the remainder of the project area. These sites are most likely <br />to be open camp or open lithic sites with little or no potential depth. <br />The project area is located around the lower reaches of Lorencito Canyon on the south side of <br />Picketwire Valley, about fifteen miles west of Trinidad, Colorado. This area falls within the <br />prehistoric context for the Arkansas River Basin (Zier and Kalasz 1999}, and the Colorado <br />Southern Frontier Historic Context (Mehls and Carter 1984}. The general cultural contexts for <br />the project area are summarized in the latter iw~o RP3 documents. A more complete discussion of <br />the specific prehistoric and historic context of Lorencito Canyon is given in McKibbin et al <br />(1997). Lorencito Canyon is located at the northern edge of the 1Vlaxwell Grant created in the <br />mid-1840s by the newly established Mexican government and confirmed by the Treaty of <br />Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 when the United States assumed control of this region.'I'he Maxwell <br />Grant included over two million acres in Colorado and New Mexico. These lands were settled in <br />the traditional Hispanic pattern, with small extended family villages located principally along <br />arable bottomlands such as the Picketwire Valley. Colorado Coal and Iron, one of the <br />. predecessors of Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I}, began to develop coal reserves around'I'rinidad <br />and in the Picketwire Valley and upper Purgatoire River Valley in the early I S60s. The Lorencito <br />Canyon Mine property was within portions of the Maxwell Grant obtained from the federal <br />government by Colorado Coal and Iron, and Cf'&1 continued to hold title to these lands until <br />1946. But the coal reserves here were overshadowed by richer or mare accessible coal reserves <br />to the north and northwest, and this area remained undeveloped. The Parsons family, who had <br />teased much of this land from CF&I over the years, obtained the Lorencito property from CF&[ <br />in 1946. The land remained undeveloped, and was used primarily for grazing. Consequently, <br />there are few known historic resources in this area, and no cultural resource investigations were <br />conducted around Lorencito Canyon until after the property was acquired by the F.E. Hill <br />Company and Hill Ranch in 1994. <br />Prehistoric Context <br />A prehistoric context for the Arkansas River Basin, which encompasses roughly the southeast <br />quarter of Colorado, has recently been compiled for the Colorado Council of Professional <br />Archaeologists {Zier and Kalasz 1499}. Lorencito Canyon is in the south end of the Park Plateau <br />sub-section in the southwest corner of the latter context area. Table 2 lists the cultural taxa ihst <br />are used in the Arkansas River Basin context, with their temporal ranges, and equivalent or <br />overlapping cultural taxa that have commonly been used in cultural resource investigations in the <br />region. The prehistory of the area is divided into three cultural stages, Paleoindian, Archaic, and <br />Late Prehistoric. "I'he concepts of these cultural stages and their subdivisions are chronological <br />and evolutionary, but the assignment of particular sites to these taxi is often narrowly based on <br />