Holiday Tree Planted Near Excavation Site

City officials planted the city’s first official Christmas tree Wednesday, about 10 feet from the site first chosen until bits of something old began to be unearthed.

Volunteers and city workers lowered the 1,400-pound, 25-foot deodar cedar into a section of the city’s Historic Town Center Park, where archeologists and Indian representatives say it can grow without disturbing whatever lies under the first site.

The city’s plans to hold a tree-lighting ceremony in December were halted three weeks ago when archeologists stumbled upon fragments of ceramics, glass and possibly 18th century foundations as the site was being excavated. But longtime resident Dick Mendelson, 87, whose family bought a hotel on the site in 1865, said the spot was once the hotel’s cesspool.

Others, however, contend they found more than that.

“An adobe foundation was found, not just irrigation pipes or a cesspool,” said Mechelle Lawrence, economic development administrator overseeing the project.

Benjamin Vargas, 28, of Macko Inc., field director for the excavation, said: “We have something that is definitely not related to the Mendelson inn. People build buildings on top of previous archeological remains that were never recorded.”

Vargas said the earth and other particles will be analyzed and recorded at the company’s laboratory.

But Mendelson said the brick wall discovered by archeologists is probably the top of the cesspool, as they are normally lined with brick. He also contends that a horseshoe the excavators found may have belonged to his late horse Flaco, a name in Spanish for thin.

“That was all that was left of the old horse probably,” Mendelson said.