In 1991 the Western Region was added to The Archaeological Conservancy. The first acquisition for the region is the Borax Lake preserve which dates to 12,000 years ago and is considered one of the oldest sites in California. The Borax Lake site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006 and added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Aerial of Borax Lake site, the first acquisition for the Western Regional Office.
Lynn Dunbar was hired as the first Western Regional Director and established an office in Newcastle, Calif. She made significant strides in establishing the Western Region and in 1993 she was a co-recipient of 1993 California Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for “exceptional effort to acquire and maintain Borax Lake site, one of the most important Paleo-Indian archaeological sites in California, as a permanent archaeological preserve.”
Cory Wilkins, our current Western Regional Director, was hired in 2010. Over the past 14 years Cory has been responsible for 28 successful preservation acquisitions across the five states he oversees. His first acquisition was Redtfeldt Mound, a mound site in the San Joaquin Valley of California that was acquired in 2012. It is believed to be the last existing mound associated with ancient Tulare Lake. The site was dated to approximately 1500 B.P.
In 2016, Cory moved the Western regional office from California to its current location in Reno, Nev and then in 2022, Linsie Lafayette was hired as the Western Field Representative. Her expertise and investigatory skills have led to successful acquisition projects in Nevada, Washington, and California.
Other significant acquisitions for the Western region include:
- Rocky Hill (1990): An extremely important California site with hundreds of pictographs painted on granite boulders.
- Manis Mastodon (2002): This western Washington site supports evidence that humans were hunting large mammals in North America 13,800 years ago.
- Leonard Rockshelter (2002): Famed archaeologist Robert Heizer excavated this Nevada site and found several obsidian flakes associated with bat guano radiocarbon dated to ~13,000 years ago.
- Croft (2013): The Conservancy’s first preserve in Idaho. It consists of three lave tube caves containing butchered mammoth and other bones associated with Folsom tools that date 10,000 BP+.
