In the summer of 1997, in cooperation with the United States Forest Service, a bunch of people spent three weeks camping in the Payette National Forest to dig up a hundred-year-old log structure to see if it had been occupied by Chinese miners.
"10-IH-1457" is the official Smithsonian Institution designation for the site, also known as "Broken Bowl."The location was Warren, Idaho, a small "ghost town" north of McCall, at 5800 feet. The site itself was a two-mile hike from town, and dig participants had to cross dredge trailings, bridge a stream, and continue into an unimproved wilderness trail to get to work every day.
Warren itself is a very small town with only a dozen year-round residents and one place of business, where the town's one public phone is located. Every year a target shooting contest brings in tourists, and hunting, fishing, and relaxing bring in other vacationers for the summer. The Guard Station next to the old Warren school, where there is a well-maintained informational display about Warren's history and the presence of Chinese miners in the area, houses smokejumpers during fire season. In the summer, Warren is reached via a dirt road which is reasonably well graded (enough for logging and mining trucks, in any case). In winter, the road is closed to wheel traffic, and the town can be reached only by plane and snowmobile. Mail is delivered twice weekly.
Gold mining has been an important activity in the area for over a hundred years. Most spectacularly, miners used immense dredging machines, with buckets measuring about 1.5 m across, to dig up entire riverbeds in the Warren Meadows. The dredges left long, high piles of rubble, or tailings, all over the valley, one of which caught a Buick Special some time in the 1940's. Dredging operations were halted during the Second World War, but underground mining continues today. The Chinese in Warren performed mostly placer and sluice mining on the hillsides.
When folks weren't digging in the dirt and learning how to make perfect corners on their lots, they were in class, learning about heritage resource management, mapping, and other topics relevant to archaeology and the field school experience. Each person also spent at least one day in lab cleaning, cataloguing, and restoring artifacts.
Finally, some photos of the 1997 crew:
Adam Perzynski taking a reading on a corner
David Murphy and Mark Zastoupil conferring at the
transit
Mark Glaser working on his digging technique
(the man's a wrecking machine)
Mark Zastoupil several days into the dig
Mark Zastoupil squint or scowl? you decide
Tricia Riddle and Adam Perzynski when's lunch?
Michele Grant in the lab
Michele Grant break time
Dr. Sam. Couch hard at work in the schoolhouse
Tricia Riddle a penny!
Michele Grant mapping an artifact
Michole Christopher surface clearing
David Murphy in McCall
Michole Christopher photographing artifacts
David Murphy avoiding insects
Jeff Parnett using the transit
Michole Christopher scraping near the fireplace
Some photos by Michole Christopher:
Tricia Riddle teaches David Murphy to two-step;
Adam Perzynski watches
Adam Perzynski with Tricia Riddle and
Michole Christopher at the Winter Inn, evening
Tricia Riddle, David Murphy, and Adam Perzynski
from the whites' cemetery overlooking Warren
entrance to Ah Toy's semi-subterranean dwelling
"Doug," the deer that wandered around the site
looking for a handout
Hays Station, back view
sign outside the Chinese cemetery
markers indicating now-empty graves
More information about 10-IH-1457 and the 1998 program is available on Dr. Sam. Couch's page at GSU.
12 Feb 1998
