Human remains, artifacts found at planned dam site

Native American leader says disturbing burial lands would be ‘huge violation’

In a wild and pristine creek canyon, there’s a collision between Santa Clara County’s past and future.

Ancient bones and abundant artifacts lie along Pacheco Creek, just north of Highway 152 at Pacheco Pass, where generations of Native Americans lived, died and now rest in peace.

But the site is also where Silicon Valley’s largest water provider plans to expand a reservoir, storing more water for our region’s ever-growing thirst.

“If you dig them up, then what? They belonged to somebody,” said archeologist Mark Hylkema, who in 1993 documented eight different Native American sites on the property, dating from 1000 B.C. to 500 A.D., for the journal Society for California Archaeology Proceedings. “Once it’s gone, it’s forever erased.”

Water officials, who have long eyed the sycamore-studded canyon as a source of relief for its water needs, are in negotiations to buy the 12,000 acres of rural ranch land, an area half the size of San Francisco.

In a significant step forward, the Santa Clara Valley Water District last week released an initial

study evaluating the plan. The idea is to tear down the small earthen 100-foot dam of an existing reservoir, called Pacheco Lake, and replace it with a 200to 300-foot dam, perhaps further upstream.

The proposed $800 million reservoir would be the largest dam construction project in Santa Clara County since 1957. It would hold 130,000 acre-feet of water — enough to meet the water needs of 650,000 people for a year. That's 20 times as much as the existing reservoir.

Discovery of bones and artifacts doesn't automatically stop a project, said Debbie Treadway, an environmental scientist with the California Native American Heritage Commission. But it triggers a formal, emotionally fraught and sometimes complex process. Under the California Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, there must be a complete inventory of human remains and culturally important objects — and notification and return of those items to the tribe's descendants.

During an initial public comment period, which ends Sept. 11, the water district “will begin to evaluate all the things that it needs to be evaluating … to determine the level of review needed for a project this large and complex,” said Debra Caldon, environmental services manager for the water utility. “Cultural resources” such as Native American sites will be part of a much larger determination of “what gets built, whether it gets built at all, and any impacts that might arise,” she said.

“It is a huge violation — disturbing our ancestors and bringing their remains back from the spirit world,” said Valentin Lopez of Galt, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, which represents the historic tribal role of that region.

“If those remains were not Native American, it would be considered a graveyard. Construction would stop. Instead, we're looking at ‘mitigation' — digging them up and burying them somewhere else,” he said. “They destroyed our culture, environment and spirituality — and it continues today.”

The free-flowing Pacheco Creek has long been a destination for both ancient and modern humans. It is fed by numerous springs that trickle down the steep slopes and ridges of the Diablo Range, then empties into stream terraces and a broad canyon bottom. Tucked into the pleats of the hot, dry mountains, the landscape evokes old California, with large oaks and sycamores, grassy meadows and wildlife, including the threatened tiger salamander.

Pete Andresen, 62, recalls exploring the creek as a boy when his family managed the property, then a cattle ranch called Pacheco Land and Cattle Company. A conservative Republican, former Marine and Salinasbased financial adviser, Andresen cared for the ranch when his aged father was ailing. For decades, he fiercely protected its artifacts from theft by hunters.

“A 10-minute walk down this creek is a marvel,” he said. “You see bedrock mortars every 300 yards, where for hundreds of years Ohlone women gathered and talked while grinding acorns, while the stream flowed past.

“Once a week, you'd find human remains,” he added. “It is one of the places where the last holdout of non-mission Indians were. They went up there to hide. … Any politician who votes to support this just lost their environmental credibility. To take this vital heritage and develop it for water, so somebody can have a golf course. … It boggles the mind.”

Archeologist Hylkema, now with the California Department of Parks and Recreation, explored the landscape with Andresen in the early 1990s prior to a controlled burn by the state Department of Forestry.

“The most striking features of the sites are the diversity of artifact types, the presence of human remains and cupule rock art” of etched circles, according to his 1993 journal report.

At the sites are scrapers, drills, blades, flake tools, projectile points and extensive debitage, the chipped material produced during the production of stone tools. Also at the sites are pestles, milling slabs, handstones and boulders with mortar holes.

Etched circles, called cupule rock art, are distributed on serpentine boulders throughout the stream bed, between the sites. There were beads made from the shells of marine creatures. Most notable was a large obsidian tool — a projectile point — that originated from the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada.

The artifacts reveal a culture that was transitioning from a more nomadic to a settled world, he said. The projectile points are so large they must have been used to hunt large game, like bear and elk.

Most startling were the signs of human burial, as evidenced by bones — both adult and juvenile — brought up by ground squirrels or protruding from eroding creek banks.

Just down the road from the proposed new dam, at the bottom of San Luis Reservoir, an estimated 100 sites lie under water. In dry years, Lopez climbs to a bluff and gazes down at the indentations in the dirt, where tule homes once stood.

“People say, ‘There are sites everywhere,'” Hylkema said. “Well, there were sites everywhere. They're not