Ancient Midwestern Mysteries And Efforts to Preserve Them

By JOHN J. MILLER

Wall-Street Journal

June 27, 2007; Page D10

 

About 2,000 years ago, a tribe of Indians in Ohio built a stone fence around the top of a hill. Nobody knows who they were or why they did it. Yet their structure still stands near the no-stoplight town of Bourneville, on a summit the locals call Spruce Hill. The Little Wall of Bourneville isn't in the same league as the Great Wall of China, but it's an interesting specimen of the mysterious mound-building culture that thrived in North America long before settlers landed at Jamestown. Parts of that culture are preserved at places such as Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Ohio and Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. Yet much of it has been lost, either dug up by pot hunters and tomb raiders or plowed beneath the soil by farmers who like their fields flat.

 

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This is just a few miles west of Chillicothe, on the way to Bainbridge.  I had to look it up.  I didn't know the Hopewell's had any stone structures, so it will be interesting to see if it becomes open to the public.  Why is this covered in the Wall Street Journal, not a local rag?

It was under the Personal Journal - Architecture. No idea on why they chose this site.