News
Wyoming Archaeological Site Added to National Register of Historic Places
- Details
- Category: News
- Published: Friday, 28 August 2026 16:44
LARAMIE, Wyo. – Aug. 27, 2026 – On Aug. 4, 2026, an archaeological site in northwestern Wyoming was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The site, known as the Goff Creek site, is on U.S. Forest Service lands in the Shoshone National Forest.
The archaeological site is a multicomponent precontact site, meaning the location was occupied during multiple time periods before the first Europeans reached Wyoming. The site was occupied approximately from 9,300 years before present until approximately 300 years before present. The site was first formally documented in 1976 and was reinvestigated in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, during which time archaeological excavations were conducted.
The site is significant enough to be listed on the National Register at the statewide level because it has helped archaeologists understand large regional patterns, such as the chronology of diagnostic projectile points (arrowheads or spear points) in Wyoming. Goff Creek has one of the largest precontact artifact assemblages in the entire Rocky Mountain region. Excavated portions of the site have yielded large and diverse assemblages of artifacts that have helped answer archaeological questions about precontact subsistence practices and site function. Thousands of chipped stone artifacts, including chips, projectile points, scrapers, and other stone tools, as well as thousands of faunal remains, mostly from bighorn sheep, at the site.
The National Register listing was prepared by University of Wyoming anthropology graduate student Casey Black as part of the State Historic Preservation Office’s (SHPO) student internship program. Since the internship program began in 2010, 22 archaeological sites or districts have been listed on the National Register through the program. The program teaches students how to prepare documentation for listing archaeological sites on the National Register, helps increase the number of archaeological properties listed in Wyoming, and provides students with practical research experience.
For more information about the Goff Creek site, contact Gwendolyn Kristy, chief of planning & historic contexts for the Wyoming SHPO. You can also learn more about the National Register of Historic Places at wyoshpo.wyo.gov.
Figure 1: Overview of one of the excavation blocks in 1996 at the Goff Creek Site, courtesy of the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist. Figure 2: Photographs of bone tools recovered from the Site, courtesy of the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist.
Contact:
Gwendolyn Kristy, Chief, Planning & Historic Contexts
Wyoming Historic Preservation Office
(307) 399-5366; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.