From Rancho to Reservoir

Field and Lab Workers

The project required a variety of skills: sketches using a portable grid; drafting computer graphics; oral-history interview of former residents; sorting and identifying animal bone; magnetometer surveys; and examining seeds

Rock Art Panel

Vasco Caves rock art panel featuring avian imagery and layers of both 19th and 20th-century graffiti

Vasco Adobe Excavation

Archaeological remains of the Vasco Adobe in 1994. Pictured are two rooms within narrow stone foundations, a semi-circular fireplace and bread oven, and formal sandstone pavement

Prehistoric Stone Tools

Examples of three stone tools created by Native Americans in the region. They are between several hundred and 7,000 years old, and would have been used as spear, dart, and arrow points

Sheep Herding

Bands of sheep grazed Los Vaqueros' rolling hills in the early 20th century. This group has been herded into the Santana sheep camp, Black Hills

Field and Lab Workers
Rock Art Panel
Vasco Adobe Excavation
Prehistoric Stone Tools
Sheep Herding

From Rancho to Reservoir

Date
: 
January, 1980 to January, 1996
Period
: 
Historic
Native American
Type
: 
excavation
monitoring
survey
Context
: 
CEQA
City
: 
Contra Costa County
County
: 
Contra Costa
State
: 
California
Full Report
: 
From Rancho to Reservoir: History and Archaeology of the Los Vaqueros Watershed, California

This is a liberally illustrated 180-page history of the Kellogg Creek Valley from its days of a Mexican rancho to the construction of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir in 1998. Native Americans, Basque cattle ranchers, and Portuguese farmers were among the groups that occupied this portion of southeastern Contra Costa County, California.