Thad,

Thank you for explaining the circumstances and facts concerning the Cypress
Project and Caltrans policy. I first asked Karen Swope and she assured me you
would present a fair explanation.

I am not sure you know my background as an archaeologist, but I am also
trained in Public History and have had considerable experience with historians
torpedoing archaeology work. My best example was the Ballast Point Whaling Station
and U.S. Lighthouse site in San Diego, California. A consultant conducted
Section 106 testing and recommended further work, based on discovery of a
lighthouse privy and a few whaling implements. Ross Holland of the National Park
Service mailed an especially caustic letter to the California SHPO in 1987 stating
emphaticly that everything that could be known has been known of the site. As
such, the SHPO wrote a letter to the U.S. Navy dismissing the entire
propertty under Section 106. Two years later, the next commanding officer offered Fort
Guijarros Museum Foundation the chance to conduct excavations. I fielded a
volunteer team the Summer of 1988 and early Spring of 1989. We found the
tryworks oven and other features, which is the only known feature like this in
existence in California. The SHPO issued a verbal opinion that the site might have
been eligible, but had been exhausted and sent another letter dismissing the
site. The Navy then hired a company to relocate the tryworks feature away from
the construction site (because they thought it was important). A third
commanding officer invited us to test once again in 1992 and we worked through March
of 1993. Although I repeatedly telephoned the SHPO to disclose Chinese
trashpits and whaler's trash pits, they refused to examine the data. The Navy captain
then funded an adaptive reuse of a 1942 morgue bunker for a HVAC storage
facility for the collection, which also houses all the other FG collections. About
100,000 artifacts and 40 boxes of food bone came from the whaling station,
none of which historian Ross Holland considers important. The Navy still
considers Ballast Point ineligible for the National Register because of the SHPO
letters, but when I worked for the Navy I funded a very official sign identifying
the whaling station and advising Navy personnel to obtain environmental office
permission to disturb the ground.

Good luck in your struggles.

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.