The Town of Alta from 1873-1878

          For years, there were discussions at Alta about the location of the old town of Alta that was first constructed in 1873 and burned down in a catastrophic fire in 40 minutes in 1878. Photographs of the main street of Alta, which was called Walker Street, appear at many locations throughout Alta.

          Conventional thinking was that the old town of Alta was located along the transfer tow, but the photograph shown above could not confirm that, because when the ridges in the distance, were lined up with the photograph, it suggested that Walker Street was actually located about three-hundred feet north of the transfer tow. If true, this would be of great interest to historical archaeologists who were interested in exploring, preserving and potentially excavating portions of the old town. In 2002, Brian K. Jones, president of the Alta Historical Society and his wife, Barbara Jones, surveyed the corner of Second West Street and Walker Street, using Mineral Monuments that existed in 1873 and still exist today, along with unchanged topographic features. Their survey defined the corner of Walker Street and Second West, and confirmed that Walker Street was in fact located about 300’ north of the transfer tow, running approximately parallel to it. Based on this, the Alta Historical Society contracted SWCA Environmental Consultants to conduct a more sophisticated survey of the town, combined with georeferencing and confirmed the previous survey.

          Having completed this, SWCA conducted a detailed archaeological surface study of the old town of Alta, where they found hundreds of artifacts from the period of 1873-1878. The results of their survey are shown here along with an eight-minute video, by Brian K. Jones summarizing their results.

Alta_Report_Final