St. George • A 51-year-old Bountiful man has been charged with a second-degree felony for illegal digging near a sensitive Native American archaeological site on Trust Lands Administration property in Washington County.
Eduardo Humberto Seoane was charged in 5th District Court in St. George on Friday for intentionally or recklessly engaging in illegal activity resulting in damage of $5,000 or more, according to the Washington County Attorney’s Office.
Responding to a tip about potential vandalism to the site in Fort Pearce Wash, a Washington County Sheriff’s deputy and federal Bureau of Land Management ranger went to the scene to investigate on Nov. 29 and discovered Seoane digging a large tunnel approximately 2 feet wide and 15 feet deep, according to a Trust Lands news release.
“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Sgt. Darrell Cashin, liaison with Washington County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue, stated in the release. “The destruction was nothing like we’d ever seen before. The suspect had power and hand tools out there and he’d obviously been excavating for quite some time.”
The illegal dig took place at a prominent historic site on land renowned for over 100 individual petroglyphs as well evidence of occupation that test excavations in the 1990s and early 2000s indicate date back to the post-Pueblo Period of between A.D. 1440 to 1660 and, in some cases, even earlier.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Joel Hafoka told The Tribune the two law enforcement officers verified the tip and documented what they found before turning the investigation over to the Trust Lands Administration. He said Seone, who is connected with several treasure-hunting groups, told investigators he was prospecting for minerals.
Trust Lands investigator Brent Kasza, said he could not confirm Seoane’s claims.
“I found nothing during my investigation to confirm the suspect was prospecting for silver or any kind of valuable metal …,” Kasza stated in the release. “I was also unable to locate any proper Trust Lands permits for mining or any other legitimate business with our administration.”
What is clear, according to Trust Lands Administration lead archaeologist Joel Boomgarden, is the amount of damage Seoane did to the site. He said Seoane essentially took the subsurface archaeological evidence of occupation, dug it up and threw it out on top of the ground, making it difficult for archaeologists to extract any useful chronological data or other information from the site.
“It’s almost impossible to calculate the damage caused by this guy,” Boomgarden said. “It is important for people to remember that the archaeological record of Utah is a finite resource. Nobody is making 1,000-year-old ancestral Puebloan sites anymore. Once they are gone, there is no going back.”
Washington County prosecutor Tyler Bonzo also decried the illegal dig, noting the role of trust lands in helping fund public education in Utah.
“The public needs to understand that causing damage of any kind, whether intentional or recklessly, to state trust lands is a crime, and they could be subject to imprisonment and liable for the hefty cost to fix the damage,” he said in the statement.
The damage to the historic site is estimated to exceed $18,000, according to Boomgarden. Under state law, the Trust Lands Administration is required to draft and implement a remediation plan to repair the damage.
