River and Mountain, War and Peace: Archeological Indentification and Evaluation Study of Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park Hancock to Cumberland (Mile Markers 123 to 184), Volume I

Louis Berger Group, Inc; John Bedell; Shellenhamer, Jason; LeeDecker, Charles; Fiedel, Stuart

This is the first of three volumes reporting the results of a three-year archeological survey of the upper 61 miles of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park (C&O Canal Park) carried out for the National Park Service (NPS), National Capital Region, from 2008 through 2010. This study was the third of a series that together made up a nine-year study of the entire park, from Georgetown to Cumberland. Even before the nine-year study began, more than a hundred archeological sites had been recorded in the C&O Canal Park. This number makes it seem as though much work had been done, but this was not really the case. Most of those hundred sites had been recorded by amateur collectors, and little was known about them. Much of the park remained unexplored. Since the park borders the Potomac River, the archeological potential of its 13,000 acres is enormous. To learn more about the archeological resources of the park, and to assist the park in managing those resources, funds were devoted to implement the Systemwide Archeological Inventory Program (SAIP) in the park. The SAIP was developed to address the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act (specifically Sections 106 and 110), Executive Order 11593, and the Archeological Resources Protection Act. The lower 59 miles, from Georgetown to Sandy Hook, were explored in 2002 to 2004 (Fiedel et al. 2005). This segment covered the Piedmont zone, from the falls of the river to the Blue Ridge. The central segment, comprising 64 miles between Sandy Hook and Hancock, spanned the Great Valley. Work on the central segment was carried out in 2005 to 2007 (Bedell et al. 2008). The final, upper segment spans the Appalachian Mountain zone, from Hancock to Cumberland (Figure 1). To address multiple audiences most effectively—the general public, park staff, NPS, review agency staff, and the archeological community—this report is organized in a way that differs from the standard cultural resource study. This volume (I) presents a narrative, designed for the general public, of the prehistory and history of the Potomac in the Appalachians, based on the archival and archeological field investigations; it is intended for the non-technical reader and does not contain specific information about site locations. In order to avoid excessive repetition, this volume treats briefly some topics that were extensively discussed in the reports on the lower and middle segments of the park. Volume II provides a technical description and assessment of the project’s research goals, methods, and findings, and concentrates on a presentation of the prehistoric research. In organization and content, it more closely follows the professional standards of the cultural resource management industry and is intended for distribution only within the professional community. Volume III, also intended for limited distribution, contains additional technical materials and appendices, including artifact inventories, a summary list of radiocarbon dates, and transcripts of the archival documents that are most important to the historical narrative contained in Volume I.

River and Mountain, War and Peace: Archeological Indentification and Evaluation Study of Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park Hancock to Cumberland (Mile Markers 123 to 184), Volume I

Series

See also