Past vs. Present : Need for Highway Clashes With Desire to Save Archeological Site

To the uneducated eye, the place known as the Harris archeological site looks like vintage San Diego backcountry--a chaparral and weed-choked slope of land reaching up from a North County riverbed.

But, to local archeologists, it represents a looking glass into the lives of the earliest people to inhabit the region as many as 15,000 years ago--a gold mine of crude hand-carved tools and ancient human remains.

It is one of the most important archeological sites in the western United States, they say. But, after countless centuries, the scientists lament, this priceless prehistoric place of American Indian life is suddenly viewed as a potential roadblock to human progress.

The valued site sits in the path of a proposed four-lane highway--on county drawing boards for more than two decades--designed to ease the glut of traffic headed west across the winding country roads of Rancho Santa Fe.

In recent years, county archeologists and engineers have huddled to provide a solution, making repeated trips to the privately owned property several miles south of Lake Hodges along the south bank of the San Dieguito River--conducting studies, returning to the drawing board to devise three possible routes.

Next month, the County Board of Supervisors will consider the issue that pits the past against the present.

Archeologists say any plan to disturb the site in the tiny Santa Fe Valley, the former home to three native peoples, is unacceptable.

First excavated in 1938, the 61-acre tract could continue to yield valuable secrets and insights into an era dominated by melting glaciers and prehistoric people, they say.

“Why bother saving it?” asked local archeologist Florence Shipek. “Why is it worth keeping our Constitution?

“This site has a natural value in the understanding of human history, how we humans developed on this continent. If we lose it, we’re going to lose a major 10,000- to 15,000-year chapter of Southern California history. And, if that’s not valuable, I don’t know what is.”

Frustrated homeowners in Rancho Santa Fe, who each day see waves of commuters speeding past their estate homes, see it differently.

Proposed Highway SA680 is designed to divert traffic away from the wealthy tree-shaded enclave. Current plans have it running southward from the Del Dios Highway west of Escondido to connect with another proposed route between proposed Highway 56 and Interstate 15.

Although they are still just lines on a map, planners say the complex combinations of possible routes for the highway each have unpopular aspects for residents and landowners whose properties are in their path. The county is bound to get angry comment from one special interest or another as it tries to hammer out the ultimate route.

“There is no perfect route,” said one county planner, “just imperfect ones.”

Two of the proposed routes would miss the archeological site, one by more than a mile, the other by several hundred yards. The third proposal would have the highway go directly over the riverbed and the site.

Archeologists say that, although the first two options might work, the building of a bridge over the Harris site would destroy efforts to salvage the artifacts that lie beneath the surface.

Even if the bridge could be built without damaging the site, some historians say, the constant sound of hissing traffic overhead would spoil the atmosphere of what many American Indians consider to be sacred ground.

Although they don’t argue the value of the Harris site, Rancho Santa Fe residents have waited a generation for their highway. And they don’t want a bunch of historians to stand in their way now.

“Recently, the archeological community has become more militant,” said Walt Ekard, manager of the Rancho Santa Fe Assn. “They’re saying that, not only can we not put a bridge over the site, but that even the air above the place is sacred.

“We think that’s preposterous. Just ridiculous.”

The homeowners want to route the road so that it meanders around sensitive areas or goes over them.

“But in some people’s eyes, you can’t go within 100 miles of the site without damaging it,” Ekard said. “Meanwhile, the traffic situation in Rancho Santa Fe is nothing less than environmental degradation.

“Instead of placing too much weight on the opinions of the very few, we want them to look at the rational views of 10,000 people here. We want to build a road that will work.”

The owner of the land, a development company called Sunland Communities Inc., wants to cooperate, but also wants to build in the area, according to attorney Michael McDade.

The owners agree that the site should be salvaged but are anxious to have archeologists pinpoint the most valuable areas so that development could proceed around them.

“We’re talking about a multimillion-dollar piece of property,” McDade said. “And so every acre you can save is an expensive piece of real estate. We’d like to determine those important sites and then, perhaps, develop around them. But the county has said that no one knows enough yet, so the matter has been tabled for awhile.”

In general, the Board of Supervisors will face three choices when it considers the issue June 16. The first, known as Alignment A, was the result of a study commissioned by Rancho Santa Fe residents in 1988 and directly crosses the Harris site.

This route, which would be the most costly to build, involves a fly-over ramp that would divert westbound traffic on Del Dios Highway southbound onto the new highway. Ranch residents prefer this route because they feel it is their best bet to divert traffic.

The two other choices--Alternate B and the Easterly Route--would force traffic to make a left turn onto the highway at a traffic light on Del Dios. Rancho Santa Fe residents dislike these routes--both of which skirt the Harris site farther south--because they believe they are not as attractive to motorists, who might decide to skip the highway and head through the Ranch anyway.

Ekard said that Ranch residents would be willing to agree to a compromise that would include the much-desired overpass at Del Dios Highway but that would skirt the archeological site farther south by substituting one of the alternate routes.

“The intersection at Del Dios is the key,” he said. “That’s what we’re concerned about.”

The site, named after former farmer and landowneW. Harris, was discovered in 1920 when Malcolm Rogers, a historian with the San Diego Museum of Man, walked several county riverbeds after a major storm.

Along the shores of the San Dieguito River, Rogers found artifacts such as scraping tools and large spear points. Almost 20 years later, in 1938, Rogers received grants to first excavate the site.

Since then, teams of archeologists have returned a half dozen times, said Roger Carrico, an archeologist who in 1991 completed a digging project there as part of a study conducted for the county.

The Harris site, Carrico said, has since been identified as one of the longest-sustained sites of American Indian cultures in Southern California--reaching back as far as perhaps 15,000 years.

Three peoples, the San Dieguitans, the La Jollans and, finally, the Kumeyaay (pronounced “Koom-yigh”) established their own elaborate yet distinct cultures there over time, experts say.

The remains and artifacts have so far been found anywhere from 3 to 9 feet underground, a profound depth considering that most archeological sites are exhausted after two to three feet.

“Part of the importance of the site is its depth,” Shipek said. “They’ve gone down 6 to 9 feet, and they’re still not through. So, who knows how far down it goes?”

To date, the archeologists have concentrated on a larger lower area of the site as well as several isolated areas on the grassy slope rising from the bed of the San Dieguito River east of Encinitas.

Archeologists say that the whole area is valued because of scattered artifacts that have been found along one-time trails that connect the main salvage sites.

Lynne Christenson, a San Diego State archeologist, said the Harris site has allowed local scientists to play Sherlock Holmes right in their own back yard.

So far, little is known about the nomadic band of 40 or so San Dieguitans, the site’s earliest inhabitants--hunters and fishermen who established it as a temporary camp. Later, perhaps to about 3,000 years ago, came the La Jollans, more sedentary people who left traces of milling tools that they used to grind nuts, seeds and berries.

Also found from the La Jollan culture were spear points, ornaments such as shell beads and abalone shell pendants and sections of fire hearths.

Lastly, there were the Kumeyaay, who pounded acorns in large stone bowls with mortars. These were the people the first Spanish explorers found when they arrived in the region centuries ago.

“The truth is that site is irreplaceable,” Christenson said. “It will help us answer so many things we don’t yet know about these cultures and about the region during that time.

“With further exploration, perhaps the site can tell us, ‘Did the San Dieguitans turn into the La Jollans? What were the environmental changes that took place?’ This is where we can find out, ‘Did these people resemble the Plains Indians? Did they have tepees and horses? Probably not. And, if they didn’t, why not?’ ”

In a report to county supervisors last fall, Carrico concluded that the building of a bridge over the Harris site would damage the place irreparably. In an interview, Carrico shuddered at the suggestion made by some to excavate the site now and save the results for scientists to study later. What if the results call for new examination of the site?

Rather, he believes the site should be “banked,” or preserved until the technology is developed to take further advantage of the raw materials unearthed there.

For example, he said, new technology not even available five years ago allows scientists to test elongated spearheads used by the San Dieguitans 9,000 years ago to determine exactly what kinds of animals they hunted.

“We can send the spears to the lab and, through blood serum tests, we can specify that these people killed deer and rabbit,” he said. “It’s a major breakthrough because it fills out the picture. No longer do we have to make this stuff up, or make guesses. Now we know for sure.”

Work also has stopped at the site because scientists cannot accurately date materials that would be unearthed by further excavation. Archeologists say it might be better to wait until new dating measures can be developed for such an aged site.

Meanwhile, Carrico says there may be another explanation for the apparent public apathy toward the Harris site.

“There seems to be a bit of racism going on here,” he said. “If we pulled up 9,000-year-old artifacts from Egypt or from the Neanderthals in France, people would say ‘Wow!’

“But, because they’re found here, right in our own back yards, and because they’re Indian artifacts, people say, ‘Where’s the temple? Where’s something I can see?’ It’s racism, and it’s provincialism.

“As a culture, many of us here don’t relate to the Indians. It’s not our culture, not our roots. The important thing to understand is that local history did not begin when the Spanish landed here. It began some 10,000 years earlier. And this site is proof of that.”

Anna Noah, environmental management coordinator for the County Department of Public Works, said the debate over the Harris site began in 1988 when planners made changes to the proposed route, causing it to cross into the archeological site.

An archeologist herself, Noah recalled the meeting in which she discovered what was to become a collision course on both theory and practice.

“At the time, I didn’t understand the repercussions of the thing,” she said. “The plan was just a line on the map. And a line on the map could be moved.”