SWCA was retained by the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) to perform a Class III cultural resources inventory of individual transmission line structure locations and several proposed staging areas on the 65-mile Parker-Blythe #1 161-kV Transmission Line, which extends from Blythe, California, to Parker, Arizona. The inventory and a revisit to all previously recorded sites in the Area of Potential Effect (APE) are supplements to a previous survey of the transmission line that failed to examine a sufficient APE around each transmission line pole location.

 

 

SWCA staff determined that 19 transmission line sites that were eligible for National Register nomination. The team developed numerous preservation strategies to protect the sites during this project.

 

SWCA also recommended that the cultural resources identified during the inventory be treated under the California Archaeological Resource Identification and Data Acquisition Program (CARIDAP)–Sparse Lithic Scatters (SLS), which provides a framework for the streamlined identification, evaluation and treatment of prehistoric archaeological sites.