scholarly journals Archaeological Data Recovery (41TR198) and Survey Within the Riverside Oxbow Project Tarrant County, Texas

Author(s):  
Duane Peter ◽  
James Harrison

This report presents the findings of the survey of 75 acres and the excavation of 28 cubic meters of site 41TR198 (Crooked Oxbow Site) within the Riverside Oxbow Project sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, in partnership with the City of Fort Worth and the Tarrant County Water District. Planned impacts from this proposed project include habitat restoration, channel reestablishment, vegetation plantings, new roads, and sports field construction. The deepest impacts planned for the Area of Potential Effects are one meter and involve the excavation of a shallow lake utilizing the relict oxbow bordering site 41TR198. Impacts planned for the remainder of the project area will be less than one-half meter deep. Overall, the project will attempt to use the existing landscape as much as possible in order to reduce impacts. As a federal agency the USACE is required to undertake cultural resource investigations for their projects in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended through 2001. Since the Tarrant Regional Water District is the landowner and co-sponsor of the project, and a political subentity of the state of Texas, this project was also conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 5040.

The investigations conducted along Big Cypress Bayou were undertaken as part of a project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop a fish and wildlife habitat restoration area. This project will benefit and is supported by the City of Jefferson and the Cypress Valley Alliance in helping to educate the public on the merits of environmental and historical preservation. The authors wish to thank several individuals for the completion of this report. First and foremost, our deepest thanks go to Mr. Duke De Ware whose love of the history and vision for the future of Jefferson is paramount. The use of facilities, equipment, and personnel from the Cypress Valley Alliance, and the tireless efforts of Elijah Dusek was beyond what we could have asked-thank you for everything. The ever present support, direction, and patience from Dr. Jay R. Newman of the Planning Division, U.S . Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District is also greatly appreciated.


Author(s):  
Laura Acuna ◽  
Brandon Young ◽  
Rhiana Ward

On behalf of VRRSP Consultants, LLC and Central Texas Regional Water Supply Corporation (CTRWSC), SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA) conducted cultural resources investigations of the Vista Ridge Regional Water Supply (Vista Ridge) Project in Burleson, Lee, Bastrop, Caldwell, Guadalupe, Comal, and Bexar Counties. The work will involve installation of a 139.45-mile-long, 60-inch-diameter water pipeline from northcentral San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, to Deanville, Burleson County, Texas. The report details the findings of investigations from June 2015 to December 2015, on the alignment dated December 8, 2015 (December 8th). The Vista Ridge Project is subject to review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (54 USC 306108) and its implementing regulations (36 CFR 800), in anticipation of a Nationwide Permit 12 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in accordance with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. In addition, the work is subject to compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas under Permit Number 7295, as the Vista Ridge Project will be ultimately owned by a political subdivision of the State of Texas. The cultural resources investigations included a background review and intensive field survey. The background review identified previous investigations, recorded archaeological sites, National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) properties, cemeteries, standing structures, and other known cultural resources within a 0.50-mile radius of the project area. The field investigations conducted from June 2015 through December 2015 assessed all accessible portions of the proposed December 8th alignment as of December 25, 2015. Approximately 101.8 miles of the 139.45-mile alignment has been surveyed. Approximately 24.42 miles were not surveyed based on the results of the background review and extensive disturbances as confirmed by vehicular survey. The remaining 13.23 miles that require survey were either unavailable due to landowner restrictions or part of a newly adopted reroute. SWCA also surveyed additional mileage, which includes rerouted areas that are no longer part of the December 8th alignment. The inventory identified 59 cultural resources, including 52 archaeological sites and seven isolated finds. In addition to newly recorded resources, two previously recorded archaeological sites were revisited, and two cemeteries were documented. Of the 52 newly recorded archaeological sites, seven are recommended for further work or avoidance. Of the two revisited archeological sites, one is recommended for further work or avoidance within the project area. Avoidance is recommended for both documented cemeteries. The resources with undetermined eligibility require additional testing or other avenues of research before SWCA can make a firm recommendation about their eligibility for nomination to the NRHP and designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SALs). As part of a management strategy, the resources with undetermined eligibility may also be avoided by reroute or boring beneath. The remaining 45 cultural resources are recommended not eligible for inclusion to the NRHP or for designation as SALs and no further cultural resources investigations or avoidance strategies are recommended.


The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Fort Worth District, is investigating the water resource problems, needs, and opportunities within the Big Fossil Creek drainage in Tarrant County, Texas. The effort focuses on describing existing conditions and identifying measures to minimize and control flood loss within a 48,396.8-acre area of the drainage north of the city of Fort Worth. Geo-Marine, Inc., of Plano, Texas, was contracted by the USACE to assess the potential for historic properties within the drainage area. Background research and a pedestrian reconnaissance survey of the project area were carried out and a geographical information systems (GIS) model was designed to evaluate the probability for both surface and subsurface cultural resources deposits within the project area and to make recommendations for further treatment of any properties.


From October 2000 to February 2001, personnel from Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted National Register of Historic Places eligibility testing of nine sites located at Waco Lake in McLennan County, Texas. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, sponsored the project as a result of the proposed plan to raise the conservation pool level of the lake by 7 ft to 462 ft above mean sea level. Waco Lake is located in central McLennan County, Texas, on the west side of the City of Waco (Figure 1). It is on the Bosque River, with the dam lying ca. 6.6 km upstream from where the Bosque flows into the Brazos River. Two arms extend west and south from the main body of the lake following the North Bosque and South Bosque Rivers. Two major tributaries, Hog Creek and the Middle Bosque River, enter the southern arm from the west. No major streams feed the lake from the east. The original dam was completed in 1929, and at an elevation of 430 ft, the lake covered ca. 2,700 acres. In 1965, a new dam was finished and the level raised to 455 ft, with the new conservation pool covering ca. 7,300 acres.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie J. McCormack ◽  
Kary Stackelbeck

ABSTRACTThis article presents a case study of the process of developing and implementing mitigation as the result of adverse effects to cultural resources from the drawdown of Lake Cumberland, Kentucky. Signs of a dam failure in early 2007 triggered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to implement the emergency drawdown. While the drawdown prevented a life safety catastrophe, it created a new erosion zone and exposed archaeological sites to looters. When it became clear that conventional Section 106 procedures to identify and evaluate these endangered archaeological resources were not an option, alternative and creative mitigation became a necessary approach for the Corps to meet its obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act. This article discusses the creative brainstorming among the Corps, Kentucky state historic preservation officer, and tribes that led to three alternative mitigation measures aimed at educational outreach, raising public awareness, and staff training. Furthermore, the article identifies challenges encountered during the implementation of the mitigation measures. Through the presentation of our mitigation journey, we share some of our lessons learned to improve awareness of the challenges and successes one may encounter during the execution of such alternative measures.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
James-Eric Simon ◽  
Waquar Ahmed

Rationalities endemic to modernity entail an implicit spatial imaginary of networks. Additionally, modernity envisages nature as an external domain that is discoverable by science and domesticable through technology in order to drive economic productivity. This article examines Grapevine Reservoir as an artifact of modernity. Through an examination of Dallas-based representations of Denton Creek space, we seek to demonstrate that the area was discursively produced as a distal node of the Dallas network: as nothing more than a point-source for urban water. And as water flowed into Dallas, the city flowed outward to Grapevine along the same conduit. We draw on archival data from a major local newspaper during the proposal and construction phases of the reservoir (1921–1954), as well as key government documents prepared by the US Congress and US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in the 1940s. Texts were subjected to discourse analysis, to examine how urban interests rationalized Denton Creek space.


Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula

A number of years ago, Perttula documented a variety of funerary objects through a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) grant awarded to the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. These were from ancestral Caddo sites on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District lands in East Texas, including funerary objects from the Knight’s Bluff and Sherwin sites at Lake Wright Patman in the Sulphur River basin. These NAGPRA materials are held at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin (TARL). At that time, only a few ceramic vessel funerary objects were made available for NAGPRA documentation purposes, including only three ceramic vessels from Burial 4 at the Knight’s Bluff site, and six vessels from Burials 4 and 6 at the Sherwin site. The remainder of the ceramic vessel funerary objects from these two sites (n=16 vessels from Knight’s Bluff and n=13 vessels from the Sherwin site), plus one vessel from general Lake Wright Patman contexts, either from Knight’s Bluff or the Sherwin site, have recently been documented, and they are discussed in the remainder of this article.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Wibowo ◽  
Jamie López-Soto

This report summarizes the results of eight field Jet Erosion Tests (JETs) performed on Benbrook Dam, TX. The results from these tests will be used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District, in assessments of the erosion resistance of the Benbrook Dam with regards to possible overtopping by extreme flooding. The JETs were performed at four different locations, i.e., two locations at the lowest crest elevation and two locations at the mid-slope face of the downstream embankment. Variations in estimated critical hydraulic shear stress and erosion rate values may have been caused by differences in soil composition, i.e., when the material changed from silt/sand to clay. The resulting values of the Erodibility Coefficient, Kd, and Critical Stress, τc, are very useful information in assessing the stability of Benbrook Dam during an overtopping event. Because of the observed natural variability of the materials, combining the erosion parameters presented in this report with the drilling logs and local geology will be imperative for assessing erosion-related failure modes of Benbrook Dam.


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