An Archeological Survey of a Portion of the Fall Line Freeway, Wilkinson, Baldwin and Washington Counties, Georgia

This report presents the results of an intensive archeological survey of the proposed routing of the Fall Line Freeway between the Twiggs/Wilkinson County line and the western terminus of the Sandersville bypass in central Washington County. This routing is composed of four contiguous DOT projects. The route across the Oconee River (DOT Project FLF 540[22]) has not been finalized, and two alternative routes were surveyed. The entire project encompasses 63.5 km (39.4 mi) of improvements and is composed of about 32.5 km (20.2 mi) of new location, about 31 km (19.2 mi) of highway widening, and small amounts of corridor to reconfigure intersections with secondary roads. The area of potential effect for the new location segments is generally 76 m (250 ft) in width, while the area of potential effect for the widening segments is generally 56 m (184 ft) in width, of which about a third is composed of the existing highway and graded shoulders. About half of the entire project length had been previously surveyed in four separate projects (Price 1993, Braley 1996, Freer 1993, and Gresham and Rudolph 1986). Altogether, these four preceding surveys located about 30 sites in or near the current project area. However, because of redesign in the past few years, some of these previously recorded sites were avoided. The present area of potential effect intercepts 24 previously recorded sites, five of which were recommended as potentially eligible to the National Register of Historic Places. Because the revised, current routing of the proposed highway was sufficiently different than the previously surveyed routes and because it included substantial segments that had not been surveyed, we surveyed the entire proposed route. Those sites that we felt had been adequately and accurately investigated by previous surveys were not revisited. Other previously recorded sites were revisited to confirm that the sites had been accurately defined and plotted on project maps. Sites that we felt needed more shovel testing were reinvestigated. One previously recorded site (9WG22) could not be relocated and is believed to lie just outside of the area of potential effect. The present survey located 63 new sites in the proposed area of potential effect, which when combined with the 24 previously recorded sites, yields a total of 87 sites in the proposed corridor.