The resulting archaeological project was unprecedented; it is arguably the largest project in Idaho’s history, presenting archaeologists with a unique set of stories about life in the earliest years of Sandpoint. It is a project that tells a small town’s early history –but it is also a project that tells the story of the American West.
The Sandcreek Byway Archaeological Project has produced one of the largest archaeological collections in the Northwest. Almost 600,000 artifacts were recovered from this project; a project that has spanned over three sites, three years of excavation and two years of lab work. Rather than excavating the entirety of historical Sandpoint, project excavations focused on selected areas identified through the historical research that was conducted prior t