What’s behind the archaeological dig at Sand Bar State Park?

MILTON, Vt. (WCAX) - WCAX viewer Colleen recently wrote to us asking, “What is going on at the Sand Bar Park? Looks like some kind of archaeology dig?” We sent reporter Ike Bendavid digging to get some answers.

Along Route 2, near the entrance to the Sand Bar State Park, crews are digging into the past.

“For the Native American past, we don’t have any written records, so archeological sites represent the only evidence that we have going back thousands of years in time,” said John Crock, the director of the University of Vermont’s Consulting Archeology Program. He’s leading a crew excavating a site believed to be from an Abenaki tribe around 500 years ago. “Probably a very seasonal camp, not a very large one.”

The area just a few feet from busy Route 2 was once shoreline hundreds of year