Loss of Indian Relics to Home Sites Lamented

Nevada Department of Museums archeologist Pat Olson stood on a bluff leveled off at the top for construction of a new home. She pointed to a recently completed house a few hundred yards away.

“Bulldozers pushed over the cliff skeletal remains of nine Indians and personal artifacts buried with them 1,000 years ago on the land where that house now stands,” the archeologist said sadly.

“It just makes me sick that we had no way to stop it. God only knows what evidence of early man was on this site for a new home. It, too, was destroyed by bulldozers’ blades and pushed over into the canyon.”

Olson has been field archeologist attached to Nevada’s Lost City Museum since 1980 in this small desert town 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

She drove 2 1/2 miles along the bluff overlooking the Muddy River at the northern edge of Overton noting several new homes as well as land being leveled for home sites. She also drove to a gravel pit that had been located on Indian ruins.

“This is a prime archeological area. Buried a few inches below the surface are or were remains of prehistoric homes, Indian graves, pottery, jewelry, tools, clothing, all clues to what life was like here from AD 317 to AD 1150, and perhaps centuries before that,” Olson explained.

“But it is on private land being developed. No local, county or state statutes protect the area. There is nothing we can do.”

Her colleague, Kathryn Olson (no relation), 47, curator of the Lost City Museum, said the site is under destruction daily as water pipes are installed and roads and homes are built in the area.

“We are losing missing links to history,” she said. “It will never be again. We will never find answers to many questions such as where did these people come from, where did they go when they suddenly vanished and why did they leave.

“Those answers may well be found in the fragile legacy of the ancient Pueblos, a legacy being pushed over the cliff and scattered in the debris with no way of ever putting it back together again.”

Pat Olson said of the 72 known sites of prehistoric multiroom dwellings and Indian burials in the 2 1/2 miles along the river bluff, 29 already have been destroyed, 15 have been partially destroyed and 28 are still left, not yet developed.

At the site where the nine burials were pushed over the cliff, the property owner permitted the Lost City Museum to conduct a seven-month dig before he began his home construction.

“We uncovered four burials and a wealth of material, tools, pottery, necklaces and bracelets made from shells that originally came from the California coast,” said the archeologist. She told of a cotton-spinning whirl made from soapstone found only on Santa Catalina Island dug up at the home site. The human remains and artifacts were dated to the 9th Century AD.

She told of walking behind the bulldozer blades with the property owner when the dig ended and leveling began. “We saw the bulldozers turn over and obliterate the remains of nine burials. It was heart-wrenching,” she recalled.

The seven-month dig was conducted under Pat Olson’s direction by 162 volunteers--Boy Scouts, senior citizens, university students and others interested in Nevada’s prehistory.

“Volunteers had to be used because there is no funding available,” she said. “The state hasn’t had the money to purchase the property and, unfortunately, the federal government and other organizations consider other archeological digs more urgent.”

Mixed Emotions on Sale

Georgianne Ozaki, 51, real estate agent for Land Brokers Inc., of Overton, who sold a number of parcels on the bluff that are rich in Indian ruins, said she has mixed emotions about the sales.

“Pat Olson and Kathryn Olson at the Lost City Museum tried to get the state of Nevada, the National Park Service and others to buy the land and set it aside but were unsuccessful,” explained Ozaki.

“The land on the bluff sat there undeveloped for years owned by a number of individuals. Then we had bad floods in the lower part of the valley in 1984 and suddenly everybody wanted to build up on the bluff out of the flood plain where the Indian ruins are. The property boomed, was all sold and now the houses are going up.”

It is choice land, not far from Lake Mead with many of the homes being constructed by retirees, “snowbirds” from out of state and by people working in Las Vegas.

“The people owning the land had a chance to sell at a good price,” Ozaki said. “In a way you can’t blame them. It’s really sad. The state or somebody should have bought that property and preserved it because of its unique historical value. But unfortunately that isn’t what happened.”

During the 1920s and 1930s, Lost City, the name given the ancient Pueblo Indian metropolis buried under sand dunes, was considered a major find. Scientific American and several leading scientific publications carried articles about the excavations of the ruins. Harry Carr in the Los Angeles Times called it “the show window of American archeology.”

Mark R. Harrington conducted the original dig in 1924, sponsored by the state of Nevada, the Museum of the American Indian in New York in cooperation with Caltech, the Smithsonian and Carnegie institutions. In 1926 Harrington became associated with the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, where he remained as curator until his death in 1971.

Harrington headed the Lost City excavations for 14 years, with members of the Civilian Conservation Corps conducting the dig under his direction from 1933 through 1938. The CCC became involved because a 5-mile stretch of the main concentration of ruins was to be inundated by Lake Mead on completion of Hoover Dam, which subsequently happened.

Foundations and walls of hundreds of single-story adobe structures, many containing from 20 to as many as 100 rooms, were unearthed, as well as old irrigation ditches, black on white pottery with designs unique to the area, human burials, tools, pottery, food caches and the like. Charred bones of elephants and camels were found in fireplaces.

Ancient Structures Rebuilt

In 1935 Harrington erected the Lost City Museum on a hill a mile north of Lake Mead, where original ancient Pueblo building foundations are on exhibit. The museum was constructed around the foundations. Other 1,000-year-old structures are restored outside on the museum grounds. The National Park Service ran the museum until the early 1950s, when it became a state museum.

Artifacts unearthed by Harrington are on exhibit at the Museum of the American Indian in New York, at the Lost City Museum, the Nevada State Historical Society Museum in Reno, and at National Park Service museums.

Archeologists estimate that as many as 10,000 Indians lived at Lost City at its peak population period in the 9th and 10th centuries. At the time, 35-mile-long Moapa Valley where Overton is located was a fertile farming area. The Indians were farmers growing corn, beans, squash and other vegetables and cotton for blankets and clothing. Indications are they also worked major salt deposits with salt being their main trading item with other Indians.

Harrington and his CCC crews unearthed as much as they could before Lake Mead was formed and covered the dig. Through the years, because of wars, the lack of funding or lack of interest, the 2 1/2-mile stretch of Lost City ruins have barely been touched, said Pat Olson.

‘Efforts Fell on Deaf Ears’

“We tried for years to get the state, universities and National Park Service and others interested in buying and setting aside this very rich archeological area for future study, but all our efforts fell on deaf ears,” said Olson.

She said dating and recovering methods are much more sophisticated now than they were during the 1920s and ‘30s and she feels a tremendous amount of new information could have been gleaned if the bluff or Muddy River had been set aside for research instead of for housing.

“There are indications of four separate cultures on these sites as one digs deeper. There is evidence of people living here as long ago as 10,000 to 20,000 years ago,” said the archeologist.

“It’s a shame. But I’m afraid further secrets of early man in Nevada buried in Lost City may now be lost forever.”