All I Wanted To Do Was Go Look at Native American Pre-Columbian Earthworks in Ohio--So I Did! (Day 1)

Well, *technically* all I wanted to do was visit my college kid since she isn't coming home for Spring Break--but she's happy to tag along with any adventure, as is my husband, so that worked out just fine!

Honestly, though, my fever-pitch fervor for earthworks is SO bad. We'd barely rolled onto campus and hugged the kid's neck before I was all, "Sooo... y'all wanna catch up while we walk around Octagon Earthworks?"

Happily, they did!

I even got to play tour guide, because thanks to that time that I just happened to be driving the kid back to school on one of the four days a year that it was formerly open to the public (it used to be leased by a golf course that had, like, a million-year lease already signed, but now it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so Ohio was finally able to boot them and open it up properly to the public), I'm the only one who's been there before!

There's a viewing platform that elevates you a bit above the terrain so you can see some of the earthworks from above:

That's really important, because once you're in them the scale is so massive that it's very hard to visualize what you're walking within:

That outer perimeter isn't really there anymore, nor are the paths that lead away, but you can around walk inside the circle and the octagon.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the Squier and Davis work that mapped the site is now old enough to be in the public domain, so here:

It's crazy that the site was mapped AFTER they built the Ohio and Erie Canal through part of it, but I'm going to talk more about that later, because OBVIOUSLY I went over there to investigate what was left.

Here it is also in outdoor banner format, lol, and yes, I DO want a large-scale weather-proof map just like this one!

It's so ridiculous that when the site was a golf course, that elevated viewing platform was the only place you were allowed to be to look at the earthworks, because you can barely see them from that platform! Here I am on the platform, looking straight ahead at the path that connects the circle to the octagon. To the left, if I crane, I can see the closer part of the circle, and to the right, if I crane, I can see the closer couple of walls and one mound from the octagon:

But now, THIS is my favorite sign here!

Octagon Earthworks is a lovely site to simply stroll around. Just as promised, we walked the inner perimeter while catching up and gossiping:

The trees wouldn't have been here when the site was in its original use, but there are a few trees that are allowed to grow presently. This site also used to be an encampment for the Ohio National Guard, then part of it was a potato field... and then came the golfers!

Three geniuses, one of whom is graduating with a degree in Environmental Science this May, another of whom still brags an awful lot about the very thorough Ohio state study she led her little homeschoolers through once upon a time, stared in bafflement at this nut for ages before one of us (not me, sigh...), finally said, "It looks kind of like that candy? Oh, it's a buckeye!"

These two really liked the open space within the octagon best:

You can sort of see one of the walls leading off into the distance to the left, but the rest is too far away. The space inside is so big!

I kept wandering off to go hug the little mounds that block the entrances, though. I love a little mound!

So, it's well-established that I love a dedicated, protected earthworks site. I mean, of course! But what I LOVE is a poky, little-known, obscure, under-studied earthwork that's encroached upon by modern civilization in some weird way. I really like that undercurrent of something other and ancient behind the trappings of the everyday. I also love the research aspect, because while these preserved earthwork sites are well-known and Googleable, most of the earthworks still extant are unstudied, poorly mapped, and largely forgotten. 

There are a couple of good historical resources for searching out the thousands of minor mounds in Ohio. The Archaeological Atlas of Ohio has a county-by-county map that's impossible to parse for specific locations, but does show the overall spread and general vicinity, as well as wealth of now-forgotten mounds. The book, for instance, says that the kid's college town used to have 20 known mounds, and now there is definitely just one! A more useable resource is this ZeeMap of Native Sites of Ohio, which looks to have placed the sites from the archaeological atlas onto a Google Map. Whenever I've been able to match one of its mounds with the real mound, they've lined up perfectly, but there are sooooo many sites on ZeeMap that also look like absolutely nothing in real life. Is the site simply gone, or is the ZeeMap location off?

Earlier this year, I treated myself to the very sketchily titled Nephilim Chronicles: A Travel Guide to the Ancient Ruins in the Ohio Valley, because boycotting the economy doesn't count if it's an independent, self-published author. If you can overlook the author's premise that the mounds are the burial sites of angel-human hybrids, it's actually a fairly contemporary guidebook to many of the minor mounds noted in that archaeological atlas and on the ZeeMap. 

And that's what I used to direct us here!

The mound is presented completely without context adjacent to a community sportsball field, but it's this one. 

Over 2,000 years old, and we can just drive up to it, walk around it, and then hop back in the car to head over to spend the evening at the biggest bookstore in Ohio.

Because boycotting the economy doesn't count if you buy it in an independent bookstore!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!