Borax Lake Site

This article is about the archaeological site in California. For the lake in Oregon, see Borax Lake (Oregon).

Borax Lake Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Borax Lake, a Clovis culture archaeological site
Nearest city	Clearlake, California
NRHP Reference #	91001424
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	October 3, 1991
Designated NHL	September 20, 2006

Borax Lake Site, also known as Borax Lake—Hodges Archaeological Site is an archaeological site near Clearlake, California. A portion of the site is owned and preserved by the Archaeological Conservancy.

In 2006, a National Park Service statement about it read:

The Borax Lake Site is considered of national significance as the type site for a major prehistoric period in the far western United States, the Paleo-Indian (Clovis), referred to in archeological literature of the Western Great Basin and California as the Post Pattern. The occurrence of Clovis-like projectile points from Borax Lake in the Coast Range of northern California dramatically extended the geographic scope of Paleo-Indian occupation into the far western United States. Archeological investigations at the Borax Lake Site demonstrated that Paleo-Indian occupation of the Far West (Western Great Basin and California) represents a specialized lake shore dwelling adaptation”by this group, which was significant because it represented a unique response to an environment that had been unfamiliar to Paleo-Indians. This adaptation is referred to as the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition and differs from the large mammal hunting traditions of the southwestern United States and Great Plains.

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

External links

• Review of Borax Site