PORT ANGELES — Workers at the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard archeological site say they have unearthed the first non-Native remains on it.
The complete skeletal remains, found among the 150 intact skeletons discovered at the site — a former Klallam village — are those of a non-Native person who had married into the Klallam tribe and died at the village, said Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman Frances G. Charles.
Port Angeles police on Tuesday were called to the 22-acre site on Marine Drive after the skeleton was found to determine if they had a crime scene, Detective Sgt. Erick Zappey said.
They didn’t.
Instead the remains, estimated to have been there 75 to 100 years, appeared to have been buried like the native remains that archeologists and workers with the tribe are uncovering, Zappey said.
Once home to large village
The site once was home to Tse-whit-zen, one of the largest recorded Klallam villages. Carbon dating on a piece of charcoal unearthed at the site suggests the village could be 1,719 years old.
Tribal elders say the village was occupied until about 1915, when mill construction forced the residents to move.
Last year, the state Department of Transportation, using Poulsbo-based Kiewitt-General Construction Co., started a $271 million replacement and widening project of the Hood Canal Bridge that includes building a graving yard at the 22-acre waterfront site.
Construction was halted in August after artifacts were found.
In March, Lower Elwha Klallam tribal leaders signed an agreement with state and federal officials to continue the project after an archeological dig to remove all remains and artifacts.
The dig, led by Gig Harbor-based Lynn Larson of Larson Anthropological and Archaeological Services Ltd., is going on now.
Once the archeological work is finished, construction of the huge onshore dry dock will be completed so that components of a new east half of the Hood Canal Bridge can be built.
The bridge section is due to be replaced in spring 2007.
