Chaffee County CO excursion

[RGINN]

Drove down here today specifically to look for prehistoric sites, and located one. Turned out to be harder than I thought. I figured I would just look for that red and yellow jasper they quarried and used for tool making. Find it I did, and quality stuff. But it turns out that rock is all over the ground here. And most of it was naturally chipped up, not by man. The clue I needed was when I found some flakes of a type of white quartz in one area. This material doesn't flake up naturally, and it doesn't occur here; it's the type from a prehistoric quarry over south of Hartsel. Couple other items of interest at the site that got my interest, but I'll have to do a little more study and research before I can comment on them. You could probably find some arrowheads here if you took the time and walked the ground. The camp site is in one of these pics if anybody wants to go look.

 

[BosnMate]

Looks like you found some interesting jasper. Is that one piece the white quartz you were talking about? I've had good luck in bunch grass type of country, looking for arrowheads horseback. The horse looked out where he's going, while I looked at the ground. Works best right after a rain.

 

[RGINN]

Yep, that was the key, definitely produced by percussion. A few more pieces were scattered around. I should have provided something for scale, but the quartz piece is about an inch long. I just picked up a handful of representative samples and tossed them down for the pic. Actually in that pic there's the top half of a crudely worked point, couple of mid sections of points, and one throwaway cutting tool. It's all pretty much prehistoric Ute, and I kinda feel they were about the dullest artisans around. They just pretty much just manufactured what worked for the job at hand.

 

[tamrock]

Looks like a promising area.

 

[RGINN]

Down towards Bassam Park, tamrock, I think you been there.

 

[tamrock]

Down towards Bassam Park, tamrock, I think you been there.

Been a while. I had an aquarium I filled the bottom up with all that same kind of jasper when I lived up in chaffee county. Looks like the weather was cooperative that day you were up there. Had a nice thunderstorm over here in Ouray this afternoon.

 

[old digger]

Nice looking spot in the last photo, but I see several good spots in the other pictures. I find that similar silicafied quartz here.

 

[3xflyfisher]

Awesome looking country as usual RGINN!