Conference Agenda

The history of sheepherding in the American West has traditionally been intertwined with Basque immigrant communities, often identified through documentary research and archaeological remnants such as arborglyphs, corrals, and stone ovens. However, these associations tend to oversimplify the rich multicultural history of sheepherding. In eastern California, sheep were historically herded to the high meadows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains during summers and south along the “Stock Highway” through lowland valleys in winters. An historic water tank along this route, southwest of Owens Lake, bears over 50 penciled inscriptions on its exterior walls. These chronicle the journeys of Basque, Spanish, Peruvian, and Paiute sheepherders, recording names, destinations, and dates primarily from the 1930s to the 1960s. Further primary historical research into these individuals highlights the diverse and multicultural landscape of sheepherding in Owens Valley during the early 20th century.

Historic rural Chinatowns in western North America were often informal constructs, founded around singular economic engines such as mining or railroading. They were both traditionally and expediently designed. A good example was Terrace, a small Central Pacific Railroad town founded in 1869 in the largely waterless desert of western Utah, where unskilled labor was in great demand. Here the railroad built a bunkhouse and cookhouse to accommodate 16 to 20 Chinese workers. These buildings were the birthplace of a once-thriving rural Chinatown of as many as 60 people at the edge of this European American railroad town. When the railroad mainline was relocated to the south in 1904, most of the town was dismantled and its population declined including Chinatown. This paper explores how the Chinese community of Terrace emerged, coalesced around formal structures, and connected to a string of other remote railroading Chinese communities from Nevada to Wyoming.

Historical Site Formation and Chinatowns

Nineteenth century Chinatowns emerged in dynamic urban settings. In Wyoming, the towns where the major Chinese Communities emerged were relatively small but had hardy economies centered around coal mining and railroad maintenance. The Chinatowns were built based on these economies; their demise, over several decades, came about due to the Chinese Exclusion acts of 1882 and 1888. As the Chinese population dwindled, homes and business were sold or abandoned, and in a lot of cases, the structures were demolished. The abandoned and demolished structures left an archaeological footprint, however. This presentation will focus on two case studies, the Evanston and Rock Springs Chinatowns, to examine how historic sites are formed and the challenges demolished structures present in developing excavation strategies that provide the best and most accurate data about Chinese lives in nineteenth century Wyoming.

Located in eastern Death Valley, California, the historic mining camp of Ryan is perhaps best known for its remarkable preservation; its integrity surpasses that seen at other mining camps in the American West. Equally significant is that Ryan’s architectural and archaeological remains embody several broad patterns of history instrumental in shaping the West. What began as a hub for borax mining operations in 1914 was rebranded as a desert resort to support regional tourism in 1928. In the 1950s, Ryan’s anachronistic quality contributed to its appeal as a venue for Hollywood location filming and in 1962 the national civil defense program identified and supplied one of Ryan’s tunnels as a Cold War fallout shelter. Always privately held, Ryan is now owned and managed by the nonprofit Death Valley Conservancy, an organization dedicated to ongoing maintenance, active research, public education, and mindful restoration work, ensuring its preservation for years to come.

Archaeological and historical background research can reveal previously overlooked historical events that could influence future assessment and management of heritage sites. In Nevada's George Whittell Forest, U.S. settlers and/or corporations initially patented several parcels via land scrip intended for mixed-ancestry Dakota individuals in Minnesota. Further research with patent records and other historical documents shows how the dubious or fraudulent acquisition of Dakota scrip in Nevada and other states figures into the wider history of U.S. and Canadian settler governments' interactions with Indigenous and Metis people throughout much of the 19th century. Subsequently, Dakota scrip can alter our understanding of more well-recorded history, such the Whittell's Comstock-era industrial sites. Individual sites' historical significance assessments should consider the role of less well-recorded events like the use of Dakota scrip, particularly when Indigenous sites with no recorded temporal markers are present in between and overlapping 19th century industrial sites.

The opening decades of the 20th century witnessed the events of Canada’s most recent significant settler expansion. Focused on Treaty 8 territory of northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, a bonanza of economic development centered around agriculture and forestry, driven by land prospection related to the construction of the final legs of the Canadian Northern Railway, led to the establishment of dozens of settlements. Many ultimately failed, including the Bezanson Townsite. Incorporated in 1912 by way of Métis scrip and abandoned by 1923, the site offers an opportunity to consider processes of development and decline in the absence of significant later overburden. The Old Bezanson Archaeology Project is concerned with better understanding these processes, adding nuance, depth, and new voices (particularly of women, children, and Indigenous peoples) to local historical narratives. In this paper, we’ll summarize and explore the findings and activities from the first three seasons of this project.

During the latter decades of the 19th century, nearly 100 Jewish agricultural experiments cropped up across the United States (with dozens more in the Americas more broadly). Comprised largely of immigrants from the Pale of Settlement in Russia, they were funded, in part, by Jewish aid organizations established for this purpose. Funders and residents saw these efforts as variably addressing contemporary anxieties surrounding Jewish self-determination and territorialism, agrarianism, collectivism, notions of the deserving poor, and Americanization. While some brief histories of the movement exist, these communities have been largely ignored by archaeologists. This paper presents preliminary results of my doctoral fieldwork at one such community in Cotopaxi, Colorado. This paper reckons with mythologies of the West and the place of marginal communities on the “frontier.” To do so, it examines the material challenges, successes, and failures at Cotopaxi, and analyzes this data through the lens of migration, environment, and utopia.