The reason the location is so valuable, he added during cell phone interview Thursday afternoon while he was briefly in Price, is that sites on the newly acquired property "are literally untouched." No excavations have taken place, and the sites have not even been subjected to test holes. Instead, workers have gone through the region documenting where villages, shelters, granaries and other sites are located.

"We've been involved entirely in finding them," Metcalfe said. Some are in caves, some in the open. Sites range from single houses to villages with 15 pit houses.

Some granaries were "put in some of the most inaccessible places you've seen in your life," he added. Sometimes natural rock shelves were used on cliff walls. Other times, the ancients built shelves by hammering wood cribbing into the walls, structures that remain there today.

Granaries were found 90 feet or 120 feet up rock walls. "The amount of effort that went into the construction of these is enormous," Metcalfe said.

At least 20 doctoral desertions may be written about finds there, and twice that number of master theses, he said.

The sites are the way that those of the famous Nine Mile Canyon, about 20 miles away, must have been like 150 years ago, before they were vandalized, he said. It is significant that Wilcox "took such pride in not letting people vandalize them."

For the future

Jones said the state is developing a management plan for the gated property, involving wildlife managers and other partners. They are working on ways "that we can have good public access to it."

Officials want people to visit, but they want the visits to be regulated, so that looting and damage do not occur. "We have to be creative and figure out ways to do that," he said.

Public meetings will be held to come up with a plan, which could involve guides, opening on certain days or permits.

Meanwhile, Jones said, "I'm very excited. It's probably the most important thing that I'll be involved in (during) my career as the state archaeologist."

And there are so many prehistoric sites in Range Creek that Metcalfe said he hopes to work in Range Creek until he retires.

And, he added, "I'm not that old."

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Contributing: Paul Foy, Associated Press; E-mail: bau@desnews.com; rayb@desnews.com