Robert Heizer excavated Leonard Rockshelter (26Pe14) in western Nevada more than 70 years ago. He described stratified cultural deposits spanning the Holocene. He also reported obsidian flakes purportedly associated with late Pleistocene sediments, suggesting that human use extended even farther back in time. Because Heizer never produced a final report, Leonard Rockshelter faded into obscurity despite the possibility that it might contain a Clovis Era or older occupation. That possibility prompted our team of researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and Desert Research Institute to return to the site in 2018 and 2019. We relocated the excavation block from which Heizer both recovered the flakes and obtained a late Pleistocene date on nearby sediments. We minimally excavated undisturbed deposits to rerecord and redate the strata. As an independent means of evaluating Heizer's findings, we also directly dated 12 organic artifacts housed at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Our work demonstrates that people did not visit Leonard Rockshelter during the late Pleistocene. Rather, they first visited the site immediately following the Younger Dryas (12,900–11,700 cal BP) and sporadically used the shelter, mostly to store gear, throughout the Holocene.

There has not been an adequate development of systematic programs of salvage archaeology on privately financed construction work. As a consequence, the great majority of building projects are undertaken without any effort being made to save the historic and scientific resources that may be destroyed during the course of construction. Salvage archaeology on privately financed projects is largely restricted to public lands. Because of a favorable industrial and public attitude toward salvage archaeology, this would appear to be an appropriate time to initiate a major campaign to extend salvage programs to other construction operations, particularly those on nonpublic lands. Four specific steps are proposed to expand salvage archaeology into the major unprotected areas.