by Neil Weintraub, FS Archaeologist
The Kaibab NF Heritage Team hosted its 14th PIT project from May 2 to 8, 2004. This year, 14 volunteers camped at the Ten-X group campsite, located just a few miles south of the Grand Canyon. While our days were consumed with various archaeological projects, we also shared cooking and cleaning duties. We enjoyed a sunset and moonrise at Shoshoni Point on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Local PIT volunteer Brian Ciesielski held a pizza party in honor of the project at his “We Cook Pizza” restaurant just outside the park. Ross Gralia entertained us with his daily digital photography and music compositions each evening.
While camp life preoccupied the early morning and evening hours, the primary focus of our work was centered at the historic Anita copper-mining camp. Because the Anita area was mined during a short period between 1900 and 1905, we decided to intensively record the camp to create a catalog of the historical-period artifacts from that time span. Neil Weintraub and volunteers used GPS technology to record the location of artifacts and building remnants. They drew artifacts and made sketch maps of structural foundations. During the day, one volunteer was responsible for entering all the data into the artifact database. Following the project, several PIT volunteers continued researching the site’s history. PIT volunteer Ryo Kiyan also georeferenced the 1900 General Land Office map and created a 3D Arc Scene video. The artifact database and GPS mapping of the Anita mining camp confirmed the occupation and historical accounts of copper mining in the area. The artifact database can now be used to date other historical-period sites in the Grand Canyon area.
The Anita mining camp was a small component of our project. Four other Kaibab NF archaeologists led crews in accomplishing several other projects. Dan Sorrell’s crews used GPS units to map the condition of 10 miles of logging railroads. They also recorded an important prehistoric camp along Rain Tank Wash, a drainage that was also used as a Hopi and Havasupai trading route during the historical period. Melissa Schroeder’s crews surveyed and recorded five new prehistoric habitation sites, including a Late Pueblo II site, which is uncommon on the west side of the Tusayan District. Calla McNamee’s crews also recorded three new pueblos in an area where vandalism had occurred. They found no new evidence of damage. Russ Snyder’s crews spent the week in the Upper Basin on the far east side of the Tusayan District recording three multicomponent Pueblo and Navajo sites. One of the sites is a 1920s structure that may have been a trading post, near the edge of the Navajo Nation. These crews also monitored 24 sites, including Hull Cabin, pueblos, and rock art sites (recorded during our 1996 Tusayan Rock Art Recording PIT project). On the last day, crews conducted random transects surrounding the Anita camp and found six new archaeological sites that will warrant further investigation in a future PIT project.
In all, the 14 PIT volunteers contributed an incredible number of hours, both in the field and on post-project research. While the heritage accomplishments were outstanding, the friendships made as a result of living, cooking, eating, and chatting around camp were far more valuable. For 14 years, the Kaibab has viewed the PIT program as our best tool for extending and complementing our Heritage Program responsibilities and for making new friends.
I found out about PIT when a friend suggested that I check out www.passportintime.com one evening last December. I emailed my application to the PIT Clearinghouse that night. While I was still in the hospital for major surgery, I received an email that I had been accepted on the Kaibab NF’s project at the historic Anita mining camp. I decided to accept the challenge on the faith that I would have recovered at the end of 10 weeks.
My travel companion and I left Brooksville, Florida, on April 26 and enjoyed the long drive to Arizona. We arrived at camp in the afternoon of May 2 in time to meet some of our fellow volunteers and staff before dinner. The group camping unit is set under many magnificent ponderosa pine trees that are more than 100 years old. A picnic shelter in the center of the campground area is built of finished ponderosa pine beams. The comforts of home included vault toilets and running water delivered to a single spigot. The staff brought several solar shower packs with them. I had never seen a solar shower. It is a large bag made of heavy black plastic with a hose and small shower head attached to the bottom. It is filled with cold water in the morning and laid, black side up, on a flat surface that will be in the sun all day. When we came back from a day’s work, we took the bag back into the woods, hung it on a tree branch, hung our clothes and towels on other branches to make a little private space, and opened the spigot. It was a great hot shower. One bag usually lasted for about 3 showers if we were careful.
Monday morning (and every other morning) we were up early. That was the hard part. The temperature hovered a little above 34 degrees most nights, and it was difficult to get out of that warm sleeping bag. Hearing others already talking and laughing around the coffee pot made it easier to venture out. After a very big and nutritious breakfast, we each packed our own lunch and straightened up the campsite. The ravens and squirrels watched diligently for any error we might make. We left the camp every morning at about 8:30.
I was on the team to gather information at the Anita Copper Mine site with Neil Weintraub, the lead FS archaeologist. Our first stop was at the old spur of railroad track that leads to the mine. We looked up to see the Grand Canyon Train go by on one of its twice-daily runs to take tourists and supplies to the town of Grand Canyon from Williams, Arizona. We drove over dirt roads in a FS 4-wheel-drive vehicle. The land was parched and cracked. We stopped under some very short evergreen trees that Neil told us were probably a century old. They were gnarled and scarred and defiant; they stood their ground in that harsh climate.
Our job was to search for anything with writing or printing on it and mark where we found it with a pin flag. The project leaders would then enter its GPS location, which ultimately became a numbered dot on a map, giving us a graphic depiction of the location of artifacts throughout the area. Most of the artifacts we found were fragments of bottle bases, dish bottoms, and can covers. We identified 5 different types of baking powder cans, mentholatum jars, patent medicine bottles, several kinds of ceramics, and oil cans.
As we found fragments of people’s lives left in the artifacts they discarded, I tried to imagine how people had lived there during the known periods of mining activity in 1900–1905 and 1930–1932. Thinking about my family, if they had chosen to go there in the 1930s, it would have been by train. They would have taken an old army tent and lived in it until they decided whether it was worth their while to build a more substantial home. After they were gone, nothing would have been left behind except broken ceramics and empty cans. For washing clothes and bathing, they would have used a galvanized tub like the one we found. Where they would have gotten water to fill the tub is a mystery to me. There are washes where rainwater runs off rather than soaking in, creating ditches in the parched soil as it rushes on. They could have dammed those, and the dam would have since washed away.
While in the area, we visited several rock art sites that must be monitored regularly. Neil showed us how to identify prehistoric pottery sherds and the stone used to make arrowheads and other tools. Other teams surveyed and mapped the logging railroad and identified and recorded an ancient sweat lodge and trading post.
One evening, our whole group went to Shoshoni Point to see the sunset and the full moon rise over the Grand Canyon. Teams shared information in the evening around the fire, including slide shows on laptops of the day’s adventures. What fun to have these tools. I recorded interviews with as many of the staff and volunteers as possible and am intrigued by their wealth of knowledge and experience. I am indeed privileged to have been part of this project.