History
Grave Creek mound was created during the Woodland time period (late Adena Period around 1000 B.C. to about 1 A.D.) The people who lived in West Virginia during this time are among those groups classified as Mound Builders. This particular mound was built in successive stages over a period of a hundred years.
The Grave Creek Mound was believed first seen by a European American when Joseph Tomlinson and his brother built a log cabin at Grave Creek Flats in 1770. Two years later, Joseph built a cabin 300 feet (91 m) from the mound for his family. This was 33 years before Lewis & Clark wrote about the mound in their journals; they saw it on their way to St. Louis to prepare for their expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase.
Joseph Tomlinson discovered the mound accidentally while hunting in 1770. Over sixty years later, his descendant, Jesse Tomlinson and his partner Thomas Briggs made tunnels through the mound and found two rooms. One which was a burial chamber in the center of the mound and another room nearby. The tunnels they made destroyed valuable evidence that could have been used to compare with data from other mounds. The rooms consisted of skeletons that were dressed with jewelry. Some of the jewelry found were seventeen hundred ivory beads, five hundred sea shells, and five copper bracelets. Once the mound was completely excavated, Tomlinson opened up a museum inside the mound and charged an admission fee for visitors. In 1843, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft mapped the area.
The mound was saved from demolition for development in 1908 by local women of the Wheeling Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who raised funds to acquire an option on the property. In 1909 the state of West Virginia purchased the site for preservation. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Further investigation led to the discovery that the appearance of the mound is quite different underneath the surface compared to the land around it. Although it is the same dirt used, the remains of dead bodies from fire changed the color of some dirt to blue.
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