Cultural Resource Survey of the Proposed Oglethorpe Power Corporation Asbury-Nord Kaolin 115 Kv Transmission Line and Nord Kaolin 115/25 Kv Substation, Twiggs County, Georgia

The high ground between the Oconee and Ocmulgee watersheds forms a divide which may be of great cultural significance in terms of the prehistory of Georgia's Fall Line/Coastal Plain intersection. A coherent archaeological understanding of prehistoric settlement patterns in this area, and especially in eastern Twiggs County and the western part of Wilkinson County, has not yet been fully developed. The results of the present survey, and those of two other recent surveys in the vicinity, suggest that inter- and intra-site occupational density in the Big Sandy Creek basin during the Woodland and Mississippian periods may be different than supposed by the predictive models now in use for the area. It is likely that the discoveries of the present survey may raise some new, and as yet not fully formulated, research problems. In terms of the area's history, attention must be focused on the period from the region's initial English settlement following the Creek Indian treaty cessions from 1802 to the decade or so after the War of 1812, during which time the area was fortified against Indian attacks. Land lottery grants were approved by legislative act in 1803 for Wilkinson County, Districts 1-5, and in 1806 for Districts 6-28, including those parts of Wilkinson County which later became Twiggs County. The oldest house in Twiggs County was built at Dry Branch in 1808, and the subsequent early settlement history of the area is of both historical and archaeological interest. The Cultural Resource Survey of the proposed Oglethorpe Power Corporation's Asbury to Kaolin transmission line and substation near Jeffersonville, Twiggs County, Georgia, is documented in this report (see Figs. 1-2). The attached maps and plans are based on the 1973 Massey Hill, Dry Branch, and Marion 7.5 minute quadrangles, and indicate sites found within the proposed project corridor and in the probable area of the potential substation (see Fig. 2). A combined program of literature and records research and field work was utilized for the study, which involved the application of systematic techniques of surface collection and observation together with subsurface testing. Five discrete historic occupations of the early nineteenth to early twentieth century, including two industrial installations, were recorded, and four prehistoric/historic sites and a number of isolated artifacts were discovered.