Visitors to the Moses Cone Estate marvel at the excellent condition of the Cone Manor and carriage and apple barn, both built about a century ago.

Those visitors might be surprised to learn that the estate was once home to more than a dozen other buildings, including cottages that housed members of the staff of the Cone Estate.

Most of those other buildings were removed by the National Park Service when it acquired the 4,200-acre estate in 1950. The opinion of park service authorities at the time was that the buildings were too nice and modern and didn’t fit in with the image of Appalachia that visitors to the Blue Ridge Parkway wanted to see at that time.

Simply put, a lot of nice buildings on the estate were removed because they just weren’t hillbilly enough for tourists.

Now, it looks as if the National Park Service is trying to find out more about those buildings it removed some 60 years ago.

According to a posting on http://www.archaeologyfieldwork.com, the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Interior is advertising for a job opening and will soon be hiring an archeological technician to work in Blowing Rock.

The new position will be located within the Resource Management and Science Division of the Department of the Interior in the Highlands District of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

According to the job description on the website, the “employee conducts limited Phase I archaeological survey and testing within Moses H. Cone Memorial Park in search of former employee house sites. Employee must be able to perform basic orienteering, map interpretation and pedestrian and shovel testing; identify historic and prehistoric artifacts; use a digital camera and GPS unit to record sites, often while traversing hilly and brushy terrain; enter collected items and perform data analyses of artifacts from sites … and perform quality assurance and quality control on databases.”

The website job listing also states that the applicant must be a U.S. citizen with at least one year of government experience equivalent to a GS-4 level of federal service or have a degree in archaeology or related field.

The open period to apply for this job is from now until Friday, Aug. 24.