An Archaeological Survey of the Proposed Widening and Reconstruction of CR 240/Low Gap Road, Habersham County, Georgia

Georgia Department of Transportation Project PFH-40(1) in Habersham County proposes to widen, reconstruct, and pave CR 240/Low Gap Road from CR 245/New Liberty Road to the Rabun County Line. The approximate northern two-thirds of the proposed project area is in the USFS Chattahoochee National Forest, while the southern third is on private land. Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) staff archaeologists conducted an archaeological survey of the proposed project's area of potential effect. The survey was conducted in compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended. The goal of the survey was to locate, identify, and record archaeological resources within the project's area of potential effect, and to evaluate the archaeological resources in terms of their eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. GDOT Project PFH-40(1) consists of the widening and reconstruction of CR 240/Low Gap Road from CR 245 north to the Rabun County line. The existing Low Gap Road is a 17.72-foot-wide dirt road bed with variable width graded shoulders on 30.0 feet of existing right-of-way. The proposed project would widen, reconstruct, and pave Low Gap Road to two 11.81-foot-wide lanes with 9.84-foot shoulders. The required right-of-way would be 62.33 feet and the total project length would be 2.45 miles. Construction plans were not available at the time of the survey, but project engineer Layland Owens described the project design as requiring no more than 66 feet of required right-of-way and no new location sections. At this time, the area of potential effect (APE) for the current project is defined as 66 feet on either side of the existing CR 240/Low Gap Road roadbed.