Archaeological investigations at the Landa Park Golf Course, New Braunfels, Texas

In April 1996, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio was contracted by the city of New Braunfels to perform monitoring and testing to determine the impact of planned construction on cultural resources in Landa Park. The work was conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 1682. The planned development called for the construction of a golf cart barn, and subsurface excavations for one electrical line and two waterlines to supply the barn with power and water. Shovel testing was performed on the proposed site of the golf cart barn and along transects for the utility lines. Monitoring was also conducted when the utility transects were trenched. The testing and monitoring operations uncovered various prehistoric and historic artifacts, including platform and nonplatform flakes, mussel shell, fire-cracked rock, glass, nails, and wire. The prehistoric material also included bifaces, unifaces, diagnostic projectile points (Scottsbluff, Hoxie, Montell, and Marcos), two Clear Fork tools, and one grooved grinding stone of ferruginous sandstone. In addition, a burned rock feature - possibly a large hearth - was discovered along one of the utility transects. Geological observations confirmed the contextual integrity of the artifacts. This new data expands the site boundaries of a previously recorded site, 41CM175, along the flanking edge of the T1 terrace. The results of the testing and monitoring concluded that there is a long history of human occupation in the project area - starting from the Late Paleoindian period, through the Archaic, and into the Historic - and that cultural materials exist in good geological as well as archaeological contexts. The site, 41CM175, is recommended as eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.