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Mound: Site dates back 2,500 years CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1 arrowheads, a tiny piece of cor­rugated pottery and a grinding stone while scouring the gray ashen soil. “This gray ash is an indi­cation of a long period of cam pfires and hearths that the N ative Am ericans had,” H e n d r ic k s sa id . “T h a t’s typically the type of m ate­rial you find a r tifa c ts in b eca u se th ey w ere liv in g and cam ping th ere.” Archaeologists have learned some things about the early in­habitants of Southern Nevada at other excavated sites, Hendricks said. About four years ago e l­ementary school students from Pahrump lent a hand sifting through some artifacts found next to Bolling Construction on Wilson Road. Construction company owner Bobby Bolling said the volunteers found pro­jectile points and arrowheads from that site, while history buff Tommy Turner found an intact bowl. The Spring Mound was the subject of an article in the fall 2002 issue of American Archae­ology, a quarterly publication. The article states the Spring Mound contains prehistoric de­posits that date from the Late Archaic through the Ceramic period, roughly 2,500 years ago. Researchers speculate the site was inhabited for several thou­sands years, most recently by Southern Paiutes who occupied the region after 1000 A.D. Greg Seymour, an archaeolo­gist with the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, is quoted as saying, “Mound Spring is a significant part of the archaeological record.” On the other side of the Spring Mountains, Hendricks said artifacts have been uncov­ered at Com Creek and the Las Vegas Wash. An archaeologist for the Las Vegas Valley Water District excavated a spring mound at Burnt Rock, off Ann Road, he said. The archaeological sites also turned up evidence of woolly mammoths, camels and bison, Hendricks said. “This one we probably won’t do any excavation for quite some time. The conservancy likes to hold these sites pretty much as they are in hopes methods will be developed that won’t involve digging every­thing up,” Hendricks said. There are already methods such as magnetometer surveys to determine what’s inside the mound, he said. “Hopefully there’ll be some less intrusive ways of finding things,” Hendricks said. “The conservancy may fence it or pay the neighboring property owners to protect it.” Hendricks visualized how the Old Spanish Trail must have looked during the early days of the pioneer se ttle ­ments, when workers from the Yount Ranch stopped at the Spring Mound while hauling huge freight wagons loaded with timber from the Spring Mountains in the 1860s bound for the mines along the Colo­rado River. Wagon haulers tried to find a water stop ev­ery five miles, he said, which would make the Spring Mound a convenient rest area en route from the Manse Ranch to the Hidden Hills Ranch. “Unfortunately there’s al­m ost nothing available on those stagecoach ro u tes,” Hendricks said. Ruins are all that are left of an adobe structure that was built on the site for the care­taker of the Hidden H ills Ranch in the 1930s, he said. The acquisition is the first step in protecting the property from the growing development in Pahrump Valley. “If you wanted to build there the first thing you’d have to do is level this mound and there goes the history,” Hendricks said. “The problem is the con­servancy, unlike the Nature Conservancy, doesn’t have the bucks. The Nature Conser­vancy can buy thousands of acres at a time and the Ar­chaeological Conservancy is lucky if it can buy 10 or 20. “They’ve been adding about 20 sites per year. This would be the first one in Nevada,” he said. “The last number I saw was 245 sites nationwide.” California businessman Jay Last launched the Archaeologi­cal Conservancy in 1980, with a goal of preserving America’s archeological resources. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation donated $300,000 in start-up money. The conservancy’s first ac­quisitions were the Hopewell Mounds near C hillicothe, Ohio; San Marcos Pueblo in the Rio Grande Valley; the ruins of Fort Craig in New Mexico; an ancient cave site in Kentucky; and the remains of a large Osage Indian vil­lage in M issouri. In the Southwest the conservancy id en tified target areas it w anted to acquire in the Montezuma Valley of south­w estern Colorado and the fast-growing Verde Valley of Arizona. In the 20 years since its founding, the conservancy has added about 20 sites each year to its inventory, which now in­cludes protected areas in 33 states. Researchers in the ar­chaeological community have identified 1,000 more sites across the country it wants to acquire. Hendricks said the 18,000- member Archaeological Con­servancy next plans to buy the Leonard Rock Shelter in Northern Nevada. “The first thing is to get the site and save it,” Hendricks said. “Then you worry about who’s going to take care of it.” MARK W AITE/PVT Don Hendricks looks over a map showing property his organization now owns — and more land it wants to buy — to keep the Spring Mound safe from development. In all, the Archaeological Conservancy hopes to secure five acres near the Old Spanish Trail in south Pahrump.