Tepee poles unearthed in Bighorn

Only a trained eye would have been able to spot fragile evidence left behind perhaps hundreds of years ago by native peoples traversing the semi-arid foothills of the Pryor Mountains.

It was only by chance that National Park Service archaeologist Chris Finley saw them at all — long strands of weathered wood that he identified immediately as pieces of ancient tepee poles.

When he saw the first one a year ago, Finley had been scrambling down a rocky incline checking on the work of contract archaeologists who were surveying in advance of a plan by the Western Area Power Administration to rebuild...