Archaeological Survey of Proposed Widening U.S. Highway 23 State Route 87

The Georgia Department of Transportation is proposing to widen U.S. Highway 23 (also known as State Route 87) from northeast of Eastman in Dodge County north westward to just past the Bleckly County line, a distance of 17.2 km (10.7 mi). Most of the widening will occur on one side of the existing highway and will require a right-of-way extending about 38 m (125 ft) from the edge of the existing pavement. A 1. 8 km (1. 1 mi) length of the highway through the town of Gresston will not be widened beyond existing rights-of-way. The area of potential effect for the survey was the ca. 38 in wide corridor where the highway is to be widened. The entire project area was archeologically surveyed in late February 1999. No previous sites had been recorded in the project area, although several are nearby and many are recorded along the highway south of Eastman. Our survey located and recorded 14 archeological sites. These consist entirely of sparse lithic scatters and late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century house sites, as shown in Table 1: We recommend that none of the sites meet any of the criteria for eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places because they lack research potential due to lack of integrity, feature potential, and meaningful artifact distributions. No further work is recommended at the sites.