Site 5GN1664, Marion, is the site of an 1889 railroad camp that lies in Curecanti National Recreation Area on the Western Slope of Colorado. The site was occupied for a brief period during construction of the Lake City Branch of the Denver and Rio Grande Railraod. Thirty historic features were examined at Marion during the 1982 and 1983 Curecanti Archeological Project field seasons, and research included excavation, surface collection, and mapping of the remains. Most of the historic railroad features have been interpreted as habitations for unskilled laborers and field bosses, although four stone ovens, a storage structure, two dumps, and a possible commissary were also identified.

Artifactual remains from the railroad camp were few in number, apparently reflecting the short period of occupation and the plain life-styles of the inhabitants of the site. However, the assemblage still permitted examination of several interesting historic archeological problems when the Marion information was used in conjunction with other archeological data and historic documentation. The problems addressed in this report include the organization and spatial segregation of different activity areas in a railroad grading operation, Italian ethnicity as it may be relected in artifact assemblages and architectural styles, and construction of a mean multiple-artifact date formula.

Two late Archaic aboriginal components were also exposed in the course of examination of the historic remains at Marion. Together, these contained five hearths, about 500 chipped stone artifacts, and several thousand animal bone fragments. The radiocarbon age of the first component was found to be 2040 ±47 years B.P., while that of the second was 1060 ±48 years B.P.

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