Sectors We Serve

We serve the needs of our clients through innovative, timely, and cost-effective strategies that focus on completing the cultural resource management process without delays. Alpine’s professional staff of archaeologists, historians, and managers allows for projects of all sizes to be completed efficiently.

Service Industries

Oil & Gas

Oil & Gas Transmission and Extraction

Since 1988, Alpine has served the oil-and-gas industry with innovative, timely, and cost-effective strategies. Our professional archaeologists and managers provide organized management of any size project.

Efficiency

Alpine recognizes that meeting time requirements is paramount on pipeline projects. We have well-established relationships with land-managing agencies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and State Historic Preservation Offices in our region. These relationships assist in expediting the consultation and review processes.

Flexibility

Alpine has experience both as the primary contractor to pipeline companies and as a subcontractor to larger environmental and engineering companies. Our staffing levels and expert administrative support allow us to meet the needs of our clients at numerous locations and several stages at once. We also understand that some plans may change throughout a project’s lifespan; Alpine is highly responsive to client needs and requests.

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Power

Electric Transmission

Electrical Transmission

Since our inception, Alpine has been involved in providing cultural resource compliance services for electrical transmission projects. We are familiar with the challenges and opportunities associated with such projects and our expert staff are well equipped to meet client needs through all stages of a transmission-line project.

Permit Renewals

With aging lines nearing the end of their permitted use period, the number of existing lines requiring new permits is increasing. Many of these lines were not subjected to cultural or environmental analysis prior to construction, which complicates the process. Alpine is familiar with the cultural resource requirements routinely set forth by federal agencies. In addition, we are experienced at authoring cultural resource sections of Environmental Assessments for permit renewals.

Construction

Alpine also has experience in providing cultural resource services for new transmission line construction projects. We are familiar with the design-build process that is often required to achieve permitting and expedite construction.

Water

Water Supply

The control and redistribution of water across the arid and semi-arid intermountain west has been fundamental to the successful historical development of these states.  Water-conveyance systems was used to support historical mining complexes, as well as being instrumental in the development and success of agriculture and ranching across the west.  Alpine staff have extensive experience documenting these features and completing the cultural resource management aspects of water supply projects.  Recorded resource types include reservoirs, irrigation ditches and canals, flumes, irrigation-fed hydroelectric power plants, and numerous types of associated structures.   Native American groups also constructed water-control features; Alpine staff have documented a number of check dams and modified seeps built by prehistoric aboriginal groups.

Experience Recording, Evaluating, and Mitigating Impacts to Historic Water-Supply Sites

Alpine has a great deal of experience across the full breadth of the cultural resource management of water supply resources.  This includes:

  • The identification and documentation of these sites during inventory projects
  • The evaluation of these resources for inclusion in the State- or National Register of Historic Places.
  • Preparation of Level I and Level II archival photo documentation of historic water-supply resources.
  • Preparation and development of ESRI ArcGIS StoryMap historical narratives of historic canals and ditches.
  • Completed projects serving as elements of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Navajo–Gallup Water Supply Project (NGWSP).
  • Completed numerous projects that are part of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Project. An element of this project includes piping historical irrigation ditches and canals to improve water quality within the Colorado River Basin.
  • Alpine Principal Investigators Jonathon Horn and Michael Prouty recently authored the Wyoming state historical context for irrigation: Water in Wyoming: A History of Irrigation from 1868–1979. Jonathon Horn also co-authored the 2021 Colorado state Walking the Line guidance for evaluating historical linear sites in Colorado, which includes guidance on historical irrigation resources.
Mining

Uranium & Coal Resources

Alpine has extensive experience recording, documenting, and evaluating historic mining sites throughout Colorado. Alpine’s archaeologists have recorded all types of mining sites, including those related to the extraction of coal, precious metal, uranium, and gilsonite through various methods of extraction, including both hard-rock and placer. Site types range from small test pits to large-scale mining complexes and all the elements those encompass. Our staff are familiar with the surface remains of adits and shafts, mills—including those with aerial and surface tramways—mining-associated railroad spurs, head frames, waste rock, mill tailings, flumes, ore bins, and all the various mining support structures—machine shops, workers’ housing, offices, and machinery and compressor houses.

Complex Mining Sites & Historical Sites

Alpine is known for completing high-quality site recording and historical site documentation in Colorado. We are regularly contacted by state and federal agencies, as well as private clients, to complete projects that contain complex, historical resources. Alpine’s historical site type recording experience is wide ranging and includes:

  • Mining complexes
  • Isolated mining features (e.g., prospecting pits, spoil piles, tailings, etc.)
  • Mills
  • Roads and highways
  • Powerlines and telephone lines
  • Buried waterlines
  • Hydroelectric plants
  • Structures and buildings
  • Townsites
  • Construction camps
Transportation

Transportation

At Alpine, we are proud of our direct working relationships with various Departments of Transportation (DOT); we hold on call contracts with the Colorado DOT and Oklahoma DOT and have worked on projects with Federal Highway Administration funding.  We have extensive experience working safely alongside roadways during surveys, historic roadway documentation, and excavations.  By prioritizing client communication and flexibility throughout survey efforts, Alpine is highly qualified to support the design–build process and minimize project setbacks. 

When mitigation in advance of a transportation undertaking is required, Alpine has the expertise to provide a project-specific solution, such as photographic documentation, site testing, or excavation.  Some examples of Alpine’s roadway mitigation work include extensive Level II photographic documentation in advance of construction at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels along Interstate 70 in Colorado; pictograph documentation and rockshelter excavation along U.S. Highway 40; as well as our work along the Highway 550/160 expansion project.  This work for the Colorado DOT is a prime example of our ability to complete an extensive, multi-site, multi-year, excavation project.  This project also included a strong tribal outreach component and resulted in the internationally shown Durango 550 – Path of the Ancestral Puebloans documentary.

Historic Trails

Historic Trails

Alpine has a wealth of experience documenting various Native American and Euroamerican historical trail systems throughout our service area.  We are proficient in identifying various trail conditions and physical characteristics of routes ranging from foot paths to well-defined wagon and early automobile trails.  Because many of the trails that we work on are Congressionally designated National Historical Trails (NHT), we are familiar in applying the NHT recommendations and state-specific contexts to our documentations.  We document trails using standards defined in the Mapping Emigrant Trails Manual (MET), as published by the Oregon-California Trails Association.  By using the MET, we are able to document trails based on their current condition.  This, in turn, allows us to provide detailed information to make informed and well-rounded NRHP recommendations and evaluate a project’s potential impact on this type of resource.  Our past trail experience includes work on the following trails:

  • Bad Pass Trail (Montana)
  • Bozeman Trail (Montana and Wyoming)
  • California NHT (California, Nebraska, and Wyoming)
  • Oregon NHT (Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming)
  • Mormon Pioneer NHT (Wyoming and Utah)
  • Santa Fe NHT (Colorado and Kansas)
  • Old Spanish NHT (Colorado, Nevada, and Utah)
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Federal

Section 106 and 110

The history of federal land management in the Western United States (U.S.) is a complex and multifaceted story that involves indigenous people, exploration, settlement, and government policies. That story has left a patchwork of lands held in trust and managed for the public by various federal land managing agencies (FLMAs) that include the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), the National Park Service (NPS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Department of Defense, among others. These five FLMAs manage over 615 million acres of the U.S., 35 percent of which is concentrated in Alpine’s Primary Service Area. 

 

Federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), are better positioned to provide funding and administrative assistance for the indirect management of cultural resources. Similarly, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) is ultimately a water management agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) helps agricultural producers improve their lands, and the Department of Energy (DOE) Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) manages a large portion of the U.S. power grid. For many of these agencies, especially Reclamation and WAPA, their regions of operations strongly overlap with Alpine’s 12–state Primary Service Area.

 

Alpine staff recognize that all federal agencies are responsible for considering the effects of federal permits and projects on historic properties under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (e.g., Section 106).  Regardless of whether we are contracted through task orders or on-call contracts, Alpine staff are well-versed in efficiently supporting agency archaeologists in their efforts to manage cultural resources.   

Public Outreach

Public Outreach

We believe that public outreach should be an active component of cultural resource management, and our team regularly incorporates public outreach elements into our projects. We are committed to making each public outreach task unique and engaging. Past project examples include:

  • Designing and producing of interpretive signs and educational videos
  • Organizing archaeological field trips for K–12 school groups
  • Presenting our work to K-12 school groups and adult avocational organizations
  • Collaborating on 3D interpretive models
  • Creating ArcGIS StoryMaps
  • Implementing educational and internship programs
  • Designing and producing booklets, brochures, and other popular reading material

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