During construction, members of the Corps of Engineers stumbled upon an archaeological site. In 1956, Wilson W. Crook, Jr. and R.K. Harris announced Carbon-14(14C) testing on artifacts from the site, including a Paleo-Indian Clovis projectile point, indicated humans had lived there c. 36,000 BP. This led to much controversy in the archaeological community. It was not until 1978 the water levels would recede enough to access the site again. Between 1978 and 1980, Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution performed a thorough analysis of the site. He concluded the original dating was due to a rare form of cross-contamination and a date of c. 12,000 B.P. was more correct. Still, the site is considered one of the earliest inhabited by humans in the Southwestern United States and Mexico.