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| no partners | | After stumbling over a topo map online in my search for ruins sites I decided to hop in my truck and see if I could locate the Cellar Creek Ruin. I got more than I bargained for in several ways! First and foremost the blue skies over Punkin Center turned into grey rain clouds about half way down A-cross road. Secondly, FS97 was a complete disaster of mud stew. Thirdly, I found not 1 but 2 ruins and a large area of scatter!
I slowly made my way in four wheel drive up the ridiculously muddy FS97 through a gate and along the road to the next gate and fence line. According to my calculations the ruin would be down the fence line and up the 4k ft butte. After traversing into the creek bed and ascending the butte I found the quite ancient looking stacked walled ruin stretching in all directions across the top. The walls ranged from a single stone high to 3 ft in spots. The 360 views are probably spectacular but the rain and clouds prevented me from enjoying them for the 1st half of the day. I found a decent amount of pot sherds scattered about. There was also a room at the east end of the butte which held several large fragments of metates and monos. Then as I was walking the perimeter off to the SE I noticed an obvious stacked rock wall down in the next creek bed below. I could not pass up the chance to see what was laying down there and began to descend into the saddle to eventually make my way to the bottom. I was sidetracked by a very large area of pot sherds and lithic scatter in the saddle. After scurrying about in circles for a good 30 minutes I continued my way down to the water way below continuing to find pottery. I soon discovered that the wall I had seen was in fact a very large somewhat rectangular ruin covering the better part of the creek bed! The walls were around 4-5 feet tall and in order to make my way around the inside I had to dodge the plant life that had rooted itself throughout the structure over the last several hundred or thousand years. I had satalitte mapped the area before venturing out and was shocked to discover I hadn’t noticed this spot. When I returned to the land of cell service I brought up the map and saw it was quite obvious once I knew where to look. I was simply going off of a 1964 topo map from a webpage and wasn’t aware the area held so much treasure! So soggy and muddy as my day may have began the sun eventually shined and it was worth the trek! |
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