Addendum to Archaeological Survey of Proposed Widening of U.S. Highway 1 from the Altamaha River, Appling County, to Lyons, Toombs County, Georgia

In 1996 Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. (SAS) conducted a Phase I archeological survey of the area of potential effect (APE) for the proposed widening of a 35-km (21.7-mi) length of U.S. Highway 1/ State Route 4 (U.S. 1) in Appling and Toombs Counties. The existing two lane, rural portion of the highway with an average right-of-way of 30 m (100 ft) was to be widened by the addition of a median and two more lanes mostly to the east of the existing highway. In the vicinity of Lyons the corridor narrowed to create an APE (survey area) about 15 m (50 ft) wide, again almost entirely to the east of the existing highway. In downtown Lyons the project area narrowed to existing right-of-way. The 1996 survey discovered and documented 11 archeological sites, all of which were rural Historic period houses/farmsteads or cemeteries, and none of which were recommended eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (Gresham 1996). After 1996, design aspects of the project underwent re-evaluation and modification such that by 2000 it was known that not all of the revised APE had been surveyed in 1996. In April 2000 Parsons Environmental Science, Inc., who had assumed management of the design process, provided SAS with a set of revised project maps showing the current APE. SAS compared the 2000 project maps to the 1996 project maps and then in 2000 archeologically surveyed all APE that had not been covered in 1996. For the most part this consisted of segments of APE on the west side of the existing highway that averaged 25 m (82 ft) in width and most of a 3.8-km (2.35-mi) long, 76-m (250-ft) wide segment on new location that avoided a historic property. In total, about 15.6 km (9.7 mi) of corridor was surveyed in 2000 (Table 1). Archival research conducted in 1996 was reviewed in 2000, with a focus on plotting on modern maps where archival maps showed houses to have been located. Field survey conducted from May 31 through June 2, 2000 relied on surface inspection of plowed fields and other patches of surface exposure for the presence of artifacts, visual inspection for evidence of house sites and on 30-m interval shovel testing in areas with little to no surface visibility. The 2000 survey discovered and documented seven Historic period sites dating from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Four of the sites are razed and highly disturbed house/farmsteads evidenced by a scatter of artifacts and sometimes a well, two are disturbed house/farmsteads with standing structural remains, and the seventh is a set of wooden pilings from a wooden bridge over Rocky Creek that was replaced by the existing 1940 concrete bridge. All sites were evaluated in terms of eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) under all four eligibility criteria. We recommend that the three sites within the APE are not eligible for inclusion in the NRHP. At the other four sites, where the sites extend beyond the APE and thus were not fully investigated, we recommend that the portions within the APE do not contribute to the sites' eligibility for inclusion in the NHRP, but that the overall eligibility of the sites is unknown.