ARCHEOLOGICAL MITIGATION PLAN FOR THE CURTRIGHT FACTORY/MILL VILLAGE SITES 9GE37/9GE1665/9GE1667 ON REYNOLDS PLANTATION GREENE COUNTY, GEORGIA

Reynolds Plantation, a golf and residential community on Lake Oconee in Greene and Putnam Counties, Georgia, is continuing a multiple year development program at their resort. To continue the development according to their long range master plan, they required a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District (USACE) pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. One aspect of the Section 404 permitting process is taking into consideration potential adverse effects to important historic resources, those on or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. In consideration of this provision, Reynolds Plantation contracted with Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS) to conduct an intensive archeological survey of the various tracts of undeveloped land, totaling 1860 acres within the existing partially constructed Reynolds Plantation development (Ledbetter 1998). The majority of the project area is located on the east side of the Oconee River, in Greene County, and is bounded by the valleys of the Oconee River and Richland Creek. A small part of the survey area lies on the west side of the river in Putnam County. The surveyed tracts will eventually be developed according to the master plan of Reynolds Plantation. Future development includes golf courses, single family housing, roads and utilities and community buildings. The survey identified 165 sites, of which 7 were recommended eligible and 26 potentially eligible to the National Register of Historic Places. The USACE and the Georgia State Historic Preservation Officer (GASHPO) have concurred with these recommendations. Another adjoining tract of land, the 770 acre A-1 tract, has been acquired by Reynolds for additional future development. It was surveyed in 1988 and a number of the sites were archeologically tested (Espenshade and Mitchell 1988). Ten sites in the A-1 tract were recommended eligible to the National Register, and the Georgia SHPO concurred with these recommendations. 

To facilitate the documentation of archeological site eligibility, project effects, and mitigation of effects in a timely manner, Reynolds has entered into a Programmatic Agreement with the USACE, GASHPO and Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Twelve of the potentially eligible sites were tested by SAS during the summer of 1998 (Ledbetter 1999). Four of those tested sites were recommended eligible and require mitigation. An additional six sites were tested in the summer of 1999. Three of those sites were recommended eligible (Ledbetter 2000). An additional five sites are scheduled for testing in the winter of 2002/2003. To date, data recovery excavations have been completed or the eligible properties have been set aside and preserved in place for all but two of the sites originally recommended by SAS as eligible. Two remaining sites are the Curtright Factory site and the Lingerlonger Mound site (9GE35). The Curtright Factory site is the subject of the present document. For the present, the entire site area of 9GE35 is preserved in place awaiting long term design plans. The 10 sites recommended eligible on the A-1 site are also being preserved in place awaiting final design plans for the tract. 

The document herein is the research design called for in the Programmatic Agreement (stipulation 8.b.3.) for eligible site 9GE37 and associated sites 9GE1665 and 9GE1667, which are all considered part of the Curtright Factory and Mill Village complex. Sites 9GE1665 and 9GE1667 have been determined to be part of the mill complex based on the archeological investigations and archival research conducted during site testing (Ledbetter 1999:79). It is a concise description of the data recovery strategy to be employed at the eligible site which is scheduled for development in 2003. The primary component of the site is the cotton factory complex which operated from the mid-1840s to a short period following the Civil War. A significant portion of the site now lies beneath the waters of Lake Oconee. That portion of the site was the focus of intensive excavation during the Wallace Project (DePratter 1976, Bartovics and Council 1978, Wood 1992:53-92). The remaining portion of the site consists primarily of discrete domestic structures associated with the mill village (Figure 1). The archeological sites are located on a series of relatively narrow ridge projections that will be developed as residential lots adjoining Lake Oconee.