Great Mound - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Great Mound - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Great Mound is a massive Native American mound in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located in Section 19 of Madison Township in Butler County, it has a height of and a circumference of .MacLean, J. P., The Mound Builders: Being an Account of a Remarkable People that Once Inhabited the Valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, Together with an Investigation Into the Archæology of Butler County, O. Cincinnati: Clarke, 1879. Its total volume is nearly , making it the largest mound in Butler County and one of the largest in southwestern Ohio.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places. Vol. 1. St. Clair Shores: Somerset, 1999, 90. Because of the mound's height and its placement on a ridgeline, an individual at the summit can see for a great distance. In the late nineteenth century, it was theorized that mounds such as the Great Mound were built as observation or watch points, and that the builders maintained the ability to light fires atop the mounds as a method of communicating across wide distances. The potential of these mounds for long-distance communication was demonstrated in 1990 by three groups of volunteers. After climbing the Great Mound, the first group established visual contact with the Hill-Kinder Mound in Franklin (more than to the northeastDeLorme. Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer. 7th ed. Yarmouth: DeLorme, 2004, 64-65. .), from which point the observers of the second group contacted the third group atop the Miamisburg Mound near Dayton.Crout, George C. The Ancient Peoples, Madison Township Bicentennial Sketches. Middletown Historical Society, 1998. Accessed 2010-04-14. Read more on Wikipedia
Source: en.wikipedia.org