The Grass Valley Archaeological Project: Looking Back and Looking Forward


Grass Valley, Nevada

Publication: Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol. 33, No. 2

Author: Helen Fairman Wells, et. al

Date of Publication: 2013

PDF File: Wells-et-al.-The-Grass-Valley-Archaeological-Project-Looking-B.pdf

URL: https://escholarship.org/content/qt979458dt/qt979458dt_noSplash_37f1c94ff0d97939e83cfae1b7dd44ea.pdf?t=osvrdg

Description


In 1967, rancher and University of Nevada Regent Molly Flagg Knudtsen asked Robert F. Heizer to introduce her to some students who had been involved in political activism on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Heizer complied, arranging a meeting at Lovelock Cave. three of his graduate students, C. William Clewlow, Jr., Richard Ambro, and Richard Cowan, subsequently accepted Knudtsen’s invitation to visit her at Grass valley Ranch, located in central Nevada northeast of the historic mining town of Austin. Bounded by the toiyabe and Simpson Park ranges and watered by perennial streams, Grass valley had been occupied first by the Shoshone and then by cattle and sheep ranchers. Knudtsen had explored the valley on horseback, documenting pottery sherds and other archaeological finds as well as researching the local history.