‘Treasure hunter’ damages 1,000-year-old historical site with dig, Utah officials say

A man claiming to be a prospector was charged after he was accused of digging a “staggering” tunnel on a 1,000-year-old historical site, Utah officials say.

A ‘”concerned citizen” alerted the Utah Trust Lands Administration about “vandalism and potential damage near Fort Pearce in Washington County” on Nov. 7, the administration said in a Jan. 12 news release.

When Washington County officers arrived near the “one-of-a-kind archaeological site,” they found a “treasure hunter” digging a tunnel, which was about 2 feet wide and “a staggering 15 feet deep,” the administration said.

“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Darrell Cashin, a sergeant with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said in the release. “The destruction was nothing like we’d ever seen before.”

Cashin said it appeared the suspect, who had “power and hand tools,” had been “excavating for quite some time.”

“It’s almost impossible to calculate the damage caused by this guy,” Joel Boomgarden, an archaeologist with the administration, said in the release.

Based on radiocarbon data collected at the site, “known for its rock imagery shown through over 100 individual petroglyphs,” it’s believed to have been “occupied primarily during the Post-Pueblo Period,” between 1440 and 1660 AD.

Some “artifacts and rock imagery,” however, suggest the site had earlier occupations “during the Archaic and Far Western Pueblo periods,” between 1000 BC and 1300 AD.

“It is important for people to remember that the archaeological record of Utah is a finite resource,” Boomgarden said. “Nobody is making 1,000-year-old Ancestral Puebloan sites anymore. Once they are gone, there is no going back.”

Through follow-up, Brent Kasza, an investigator with the administration, learned the suspect “claimed to be a prospector,” the administration said.

Nonetheless, Kasza said in the release that he could not find anything to confirm the suspect was looking for “silver or any kind of valuable metal.”

Kasza said he learned the suspect was part of “several treasure-hunting groups,” adding that he was not able to find any permits for the dig.

The Washington County Attorney’s Office charged the suspect with illegal activity on Trust Lands, officials said.

The administration said, per Utah state law, it will draft a plan to repair the site.

“The plan will not only document and repair the damage as best as possible but will also gather a significant amount of scientific data,” the administration said. “The archaeological deposits exposed during the illegal excavations will be the primary source for this data.”

The deposits exposed from the illegal dig “will be the primary source for this data,” according to the administration.

“Once analyzed, samples taken from these contexts will likely provide critical information about the chronology of occupation as well as answer questions related to diet, local/regional resource use, and mobility,” the administration said.

Fort Pearce sits on the Utah/Arizona border, about 300 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

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