Final Report Saguaro National Park Cultural Resource Mapping Project

Clark, Amy; Christopherson, Gary

Saguaro National Park (SAGU) was established to protect and preserve Sonoran Desert plant and animal species, including the namesake Giant Saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea). The park is comprised of two districts, located east (Rincon Mountain District) and west (Tucson Mountain District) of Tucson, Arizona (Figure 1), and includes six biotic communities, ranging from the desert scrub found at the lowest elevations in both districts, to the mixed conifer forest found in the higher elevations of the Rincon Mountains. In addition to these unique natural resources, the Park also preserves and protects cultural resources from prehistoric times through the 20th Century. These include over 500 archaeological sites identified by a number of survey projects. Additionally there are several registered buildings and other structures, most of them built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s part of the List of Classified Structures (LCS). There were three goals for this project: 1) determine coordinate accuracy for archaeological sites and LCS features within the Park; 2) verify the location of all LCS features and a sample of archaeological sites in the Park; and 3) construct a spatial database for the LCS features and archaeological sites. In the following paragraphs, this report provides a project overview and discusses the methods used, the spatial database that was created, the analyses of the data collected, the conclusions reached and suggestions for future work.