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Cultural Resources

Reflecting the desire of the American public to reserve important historic properties for future generations, federal and state regulations protect these properties from the effects of publicly-funded construction activities such as transportation projects. Significant cultural resources include historic structures that are over 50 years of age and prehistoric and historic archaeological sites that qualify for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. As part of the environmental studies for the US 219 project, it was necessary to identify and evaluate historic and archaeological resources in the study area so that they could be taken into account during the development of project alternatives.

Known National Register properties in the study area include: the Burkholder Covered Bridge at Beachdale; the W. Bollman and Company steel truss bridge, the Flora Black House, the Western Maryland Railroad and Viaduct and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, all in the vicinity of Garrett. Project historians documented and evaluated 114 properties in connection with the US 219 project, including the five listed properties. They found seven additional properties of these appear to be individually eligible for listing in the National Register; including St. Paul's Church and Cemetery, the Valley Grange, and five historic farmsteads. They also determined that much of the Swamp Creek Valley comprises a rural historic district consisting of fifteen historic farmsteads and two cemeteries. Project engineers have worked to avoid or minimize impacts to historic properties as they have designed improvement alternatives.

In the summer of 2003, project archaeologists examined the study area for Native American and historic period archaeological sites. The goal of archaeology is to study people and cultures of the past. Because Somerset County has been occupied for over 12,000 years (since at least 10,000 BC), it contains many types of archaeological sites. Native American sites known to exist in this region include hunting, fishing and nut-processing camps, residential base camps, and, after about 1000 AD, fortified villages occupied by prehistoric farmers of the Monongahela culture. By the middle 1700s, the region's native inhabitants were displaced by settlers of European ancestry, who also left behind archaeological deposits. Types of historic archaeological sites found in the region include 18th and 19th-century farmsteads as well as a wide variety of commercial and industrial sites, such as taverns, grist mills, and company towns associated with the region's coal mining heritage, to name only a few.

PENNDOT's goal is to avoid or minimize impacts to significant archaeological sites. To achieve this goal, project archaeologists created a predictive model which determines the likelihood that a site is present at any specific location within the study region. From this information they created an archaeological sensitivity map to help PENNDOT develop alignment alternatives that would impact as few archaeological sites as possible. Once a preferred highway alignment is identified, the team will perform additional fieldwork to determine if significant archaeological sites are present within the proposed construction area. If so, efforts will be made to avoid them. Sites that cannot be avoided will be carefully excavated to determine all we can about the people who lived and worked there. Through this process, important information about Somerset County's past will be preserved for future generations of Pennsylvanians.

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