ABSTRACT
Over Memorial Day weekend in 1991, David Lane Woolsey and Jimmy Barney were discovered and photographed by hikers as they dug for archaeological artifacts at a 2,000 year-old, Native American rock shelter along Boulder Creek, on Bureau of Land Management land near Escalante, Utah. A year later, Woolsey and Barney became the first defendants in Utah to be convicted of a felony violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.2 In Salt Lake City, then-U.S. Attorney David Jordan stated that the case illustrated the “significant damage” being done to archaeological resources, and that he would pursue a “get tough policy to aggressively prosecute this crime, which is ravaging archaeological sites on public lands.” He added, “This is not an isolated case. It’s a crime that occurs every weekend in Utah. . . . I’m trying to send a message to looters: they have to stop this.”
