The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum has gotten the go-ahead to finish a construction project that unearthed human bones.

Work on the building halted in June after workers digging water lines ran into graves that were part of an old burial site. The discovery prompted the Texas Historical Commission to get involved, and officials there asked the museum to cease work on the lines until a plan could be developed to ensure further digging was done in the least disruptive way.

After looking at the museum’s proposal, the commission decided last week that the plans are appropriate, said James Bruseth, director of the commission’s archaeology division. The plans include respectfully removing and reburying found human remains and digging in a way least likely to unearth more bones, Bruseth said.

The commission has ended its inquiry into whether the bones have been handled properly. That topic became an issue last month when a local man removed bones from the site after claiming to have found them lying on the ground and sticking out of dirt piles. That man, Gholson resident Richard Thompson, later turned the bones over to law enforcement authorities, saying he only wanted to make sure they were treated with reverence.

Museum officials maintain they have acted properly. They say they were following directions from the historical commission, including instructions not to disturb bones that were intact in the ground or those contained in piles of dirt that had been dug up. The intention was that bones could be better identified if an archaeologist examined them where they were found, museum officials said.

Historical commission officials say bones should never have been left exposed at the site. But after an investigation, they feel confident the museum was acting properly, Bruseth said. The most likely theory about how some of the bones were visible to Thompson, he said, is they were washed out of the soil by recent heavy rains.

“From what we can tell . . . we’re all on the same page,” Bruseth said.

The museum’s future plans to expand at the site will have to be examined on a case-by-case basis, Bruseth said. There may be some areas on the museum complex’s land that do not contain graves, he said, meaning construction wouldn’t pose a problem.

But if future archaeological investigation shows graves in other areas where the museum wants to build, it might affect the plans, Bruseth said.

“Generally a cemetery should remain a cemetery unless there is an overwhelming reason it can’t,” he said.

Museum director Byron Johnson said officials do not expect to run into problems. They have known for decades that the land was previously used for burials.

When the museum was built in the late 1960s, the city got a court order allowing it to remove remains from the area and rebury them. The burial site had fallen into such disrepair, though, that identifying graves was a challenge.

Because technology wasn’t as advanced then, museum officials anticipated finding more bones during the current construction, Johnson said. That’s why the museum has retained an archaeologist to offer advice throughout the construction process, he said.

“I think it’s going to work out pretty well,” Johnson said.

cculp@wacotrib.com

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