Leann and I planned our annual trip to Alum Creek State park with one of our Meetup Groups. I was not feeling it since it the temps were going to be in the low teens. Those are not exactly socializing temperatures. I suggested we go to SW Ohio and see the national park sites in the area. I also suggested we stay in a hotel, I was shocked when she said yes. It is appropriate that the first state where we see all of the national park sites is our home state. For awhile it looked like we were going to finish a handful of western states first.
Miamisburg Mound is one of the two largest conical mounds in eastern North America. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the mound is 65 feet tall and 800 feet in circumference and contains 54,000 cubic yards of earth.
We stopped here on our way to the hotel and yes it is cold.
Excavations conducted in 1869 revealed details of construction suggesting the Adena culture (800 B.C. to A.D. 100) built the mound in several stages. The excavators found a layer of flat stones overlapping like shingles on a roof at a depth of 24 feet below the surface. At one point in its history the mound may have had a stone facing. Monuments like Miamisburg Mound served as cemeteries for several generations of ancient Ohioans. They also may have marked the boundaries of tribal territories.
There were once an estimated 10,000 American Indian mounds and earthworks in the central Ohio Valley. Today, about 1,000 of those landmarks have survived.
REMEMBER THE PAST, STEVE