West Mojave Plan FEIR/S - Desert Managers Group

ACECJuniper FlatsRodmanMountainsRainbowBasinSalt CreekHillsCULTURAL RESOURCE VALUESNumerous sites have open trash middens, evidence of cooking, tool manufacture, hunting, andplant/animal processing. An occupied rockshelter is also present. Early historic remains arerelated to homesteading and mining (Bureau of Land Management 1988:9). Scientific use.The badlands within the planning area expose one of the best known and most intensively studiedlate Miocene age fossil assemblages in the United States. Fourteen archaeological sites have beenlocated, characterized by temporary habitation, flake scatter, petroglyphs, historic miningremnants (Bureau of Land Management 1991:32, 36). Scientific, traditional, public use.Site of the first hard rock gold mine in the Mojave Desert (Bureau of Land Management 1992:5).Public use.The area including the shore of Owens Lake, Haiwee Reservoir, Rose Valley, CactusFlat, and McCloud Flat down to the Fossil Falls-Little Lake area is characterized by extremelyhigh prehistoric site densities related to the presence of Owens Lake and Owens River and thenearby Coso and Sugarloaf obsidian quarries. Sites from this area have been important indefining cultural chronologies for the western Great Basin. Many more prehistoric sites may beexpected in this area than have been formally recorded. The area also contains examples ofCoso-style rock art, both painted and pecked. Recent archaeological and ethnohistoricalresearch, moreover, suggests that the Numic religious and artistic tradition in the Coso regionmay represent 10,000 or more years of continuity (Whitley et al. 1999a, 1999b) – thus makingthis the longest-lived religious tradition so far identified in the world (National RegisterNomination Form, Whitley2002). The Coso Mountains and adjacent areas were an importantcenter of Shoshone habitation during the late prehistoric period.The west edge of the planning area includes a series of canyons along the east flank ofthe Sierra Nevada. Nearly all of these canyons contain significant prehistoric sites and almost noformal inventory has been carried out in any of the canyons. They may be expected to containsites that relate to middle to late-prehistoric settlement-subsistence patterns whereby resources atvarious elevations were exploited seasonally. The lower portions of the canyons that fall withinthe western Mojave Desert are known to contain what were probably winter habitation sites.Although a number of these sites are known, none have been subject to scientific study. Thesecanyons extend into the Jawbone-Butterbredt ACEC south of Walker Pass.The El Paso Mountains are known to contain extremely high site densities. BlackMountain in the El Pasos (and now in wilderness) was considered a sacred mountain by lateprehistoric peoples. The entire mountain range is characterized by complexes of sites such ashabitation sites, stone quarry sites, rock art sites (both painted and pecked), rock shelters, millingstations, rock alignments, and other site types. The total acreage that has been inventoried in theEl Pasos is relatively small, so there are undoubtedly many unrecorded sites.On the east side of the planning area there are complexes of prehistoric sites that appearto be related to the presence of Pleistocene Searles Lake, as well as sites relating to later periods.In the past year BLM archaeologists have inventoried approximately 1200 acres near SearlesLake and have found very high site densities as well as uncommon archaeological manifestationssuch as rock alignments, trails, and stacked stone features. Materials from some of these sitesChapter 3 3-286