Cleaning Up a Stinky Ghost Town: Developing the Townsite of Sulphur, Nevada, into a Cultural Interpretive Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Sulphur Townsite is a 400-acre, NRHP-eligible historic archaeological site in northwest Nevada. The site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Black Rock Field Office within the Winnemucca District. Although originally developed into a cultural interpretive site in 2016, an interdisciplinary team has begun working toward enhancing and further developing the site with the eventual goal of it becoming the Gateway to the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. While all that remains of Sulphur are the ruins of a small twentieth-century mining community, the site endures as a symbol of Nevada cultural heritage and is significant to the local history. Sulphur is representative of a pattern of regional development associated with mining and the Western Pacific Railway. Through coordination with archaeologists, recreation planners, local museums, and stakeholders, the Bureau of Land Management is in the early stages of developing Sulphur into a formal cultural interpretive site. This poster illustrates the efforts made by archaeologists and interdisciplinary specialists to enhance and further develop a cultural heritage site and foster greater public engagement with cultural and heritage resources on the Winnemucca District.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36708.0