At 62 feet (19 m) high and 240 feet (73 m) in diameter, the Grave Creek Mound is one of the largest conical type burial mounds in the United States. The builders of the site, members of the Adena culture, moved more than 60,000 tons of dirt to create it about 250-150 BC. It is located in present-day Moundsville, West Virginia, near the banks of the Ohio River.
The first recorded excavation of the 2,000-year-old mound took place in 1838, and was conducted by local amateurs. The largest mound among those built by the Adena, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
In 1978 the state opened the Delf Norona Museum at the site. It displays numerous artifacts and interprets the ancient Adena Culture. In 2010, under an agreement with the state, the US Army Corps of Engineers gave nearly 450,000 artifacts to the museum for archival. They represent 10,000 years of habitation at the nearby site of the Marment Lock, and will expand understanding of indigenous cultures in the Kanawha Valley.
Read more about Grave Creek Mound: Description, History, Delf Norona Museum
Famous quotes containing the words grave, creek and/or mound:
“Do you believe that the dead can influence the living?... Could you conceive of a superhuman mentality influencing someone from the other side of death?... There is such a one.... Someone, something that reaches out from beyond the grave and fills me with horrible impulses.”
—Garrett Fort (1900–1945)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)