Dolores Archaeological Program Technical Reports, DAP-057: The Dolores Project Cultural Resources Mitigation Design

The Dolores Project is a major Federal water reclamation project in southwestern Colorado, just north of Mesa Verde National Park (Breternitz et al. 1980; Madden and Weakly 1980). The Reservoir Salvage Act of 1960 as amended (16 U.S.C. 469) requires that operations such as the Dolores Project, which is being constructed in an area known to be rich in prehistoric and historic resources, recover and preserve the information held in those resources before construction damages or destroys them. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended (16 U.S.C. 470) requires that cultural resources determined to have national, state, or local significance and potentially affected by Federal development be evaluated as to their eligibility for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. It further stipulates that the President's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation be given the opportunity to comment on the effect of any such federal construction on registered or National Register-eligible properties.

In 1978 the Bureau of Reclamation entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (with agreement of the Colorado State Historical Preservation Officer) to develop a cultural resources data recovery program as part of the Dolores Project. The memorandum states in general terms that implementation of such an undertaking would satisfactorily mitigate any adverse impacts of the water project.

Originally the information in this record was migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. In 2015, as part of its effort to improve tDAR content, the Center for Digital Antiquity uploaded a copy of the document and further improved the record metadata.