The State Route 260 Payson-to-Heber Project

1999 to present

At the outset of the project, State Route 260 (SR 260) was a two-lane highway that wound its way through the hills and canyons below the Mogollon Rim. To increase safety, the Arizona Department of Transportation is realigning and widening the highway through this popular portion of the Tonto National Forest. Construction work is planned in six segments, and by providing archaeological services prior to each construction bid date, we facilitate Section 106 compliance and on-schedule construction of the new highway.

State Route 260 as seen from the Mogollon Rim.

Archaeologists excavate a fifth-to-ninth century pithouse site on the margins of Little Green Valley; it is also the site of a historic and modern period ranch.

Ninth-to-tenth century pithouse.

Tool production and hunting were important pursuits of the past residents of the sub-Mogollon Rim forests. These are just a few of the projectile points from the fifth-to-ninth century site of Haught Ranch. Both temporal and cultural differences explain the variation seen here.

Late eleventh or twelfth century tri-wall structure. The propped metate in the front shows that plant food was processed in this seasonal habitation structure.

Rocks line the downhill edge of an ephemeral brush structure from a late seventeenth-century Apache or Yavapai occupation. The floor was cut into the granite bedrock and was probably lined with mats in the past.

Pat Stein, the project historian, identified a previously unknown collection of photographs taken by Chief George Miller, the head of the Camp Geronimo Boy Scout camp. This image, taken in 1936, is of Wipala Wiki and the scouts. (Photo from the George F. Miller collection.)

The remains of Chief Miller's cabin.

Large crews have worked for seven field seasons thus far on different segments of this highway. This is the crew from 2000.

Because fewer than five sites in the 25-mile-long project area had been excavated prior to the SR 260 project, the initial task was to try to answer basic archaeological questions. Who lived here? When? What did they do? We have found that the region was used repeatedly, if not continuously, for nearly 3,000 years. Furthermore, answers to the questions above change substantially by time period.

• In the ninth century A.D., a small resident population hunted and farmed the well-watered meadows.
• In the twelfth century, the region was used by seasonal farmers.
• In the seventeenth century, Apache or Yavapai established seasonal camps to collect juniper berries and quartz crystals from Diamond Rim.
• In the early twentieth century, Phoenix-area Boy Scouts spent their summers along the banks of Tonto Creek learning Indian lore from a Hopi man, Wipala Wiki, and living directly on top of a 2,000-year-old pithouse settlement.

Fieldwork and analyses on the project are ongoing.

A mutually beneficial relationship between archaeologists and the White Mountain Apache tribal members who joined the crew was established during the project. Over the course of seven field seasons, they have become excellent archaeologists and an essential part of the crew. In turn, their familiarity with the landscape and its resources guides our interpretation of past life at the sites. At a more pragmatic level, their wages support them and many members of their extended families in the underemployed reservation communities.

[back to top]

Home | About Us | Compliance Services | Analysis Services
Publications | Selected Projects

© 2009 Desert Archaeology, Inc.