SERPENT MOUND

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Leave the Cincinnati area via US Highway 50 (through Mariemont and Milford), then detour right on SR 286 to approach the Fort Salem Earthworks enroute to Hillsboro or Serpent Mound. From Fort Ancient, take SR 350 east, then SR 73 through New Vienna and Hillsboro.

Mound, Fort Salem

Cabin, Coyote Creek Farm

Fort Salem Earthworks: This remote yet well-preserved site is located at 4206 Certier Road, halfway between Rtes 131 and 138, twelve and a half miles southwest of Hillsboro. A small parking lot and prominent sign stand at the northern end of the earthwork. Also known as the Workman Works, it consists of conjoined mounds together with a 450-foot circular ditched earthwork. The site was recently preserved through a partnership between the Archaeological Conservancy and the landowner. Its remote location bridges the two dominant Adena and Hopewell cultural regions, the Little Miami and Scioto valleys. It was likely built between 50 BC and AD 500. The earthworks stand in a beautiful grove of giant beech trees, on land which, though pastured, was never plowed, and has never been excavated. Below the steep embankment on the eastern side of the site is a sharp bend in the creek, where remnants of a stone dam define a pond favored by masses of turtles, raising the question whether the double mound may be a turtle effigy.

Hillsboro: Heading east from either Cincinnati or Fort Ancient, across the fertile farmland and prairies, there are many remote routes and tiny villages to explore as the landscape gradually transitions toward the hilly Appalachian plateau. The Highland County Seat of Hillsboro is centered on a gem of a Greek Revival courthouse (the oldest in continuous use in Ohio), the brick and stone trimmed opulence of Bell’s Opera House (slowly undergoing restoration), and a fine collection of period specimen houses and churches along the main roads north and east from the Square. East of Hillsboro, watch for the sharply rising edge of the Appalachian Plateau, and the fundamental geological and ecological changes that accompany it. Many of Ancient Ohio’s greatest earthwork monuments are clustered along this natural seam, where multiple resources and landscape ecologies could be harvested and celebrated.

Nature in Adams County: Central and southern Adams County (south from Serpent Mound) offer unique nature preserves and activities, including canoe excursions on the upper and lower Ohio Brush Creek between Serpent Mound and the Ohio River; the 88-acre Davis Memorial nature preserve with rugged dolomite cliffs, rich forests, and prairie openings (near Peebles: Davis Memorial Road, 2 ½ miles east of Steam Furnace Road); the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, owned and managed by the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science and the Nature Conservancy; the Lynx Prairie Preserve (trail entrance behind Easy Liberty Church off Tulip Road, near Lynx); and Buzzard Roost Rock Preserve offering scenic vistas high above Ohio Brush Creek (at the east end of Weaver Road, off SR 125).

Serpent Mound State Memorial: The most famous effigy in the world is best visited early or late in the day, when shadows are long and deep, and the contours of the body are most pronounced in its graceful undulation across the saddle of the hill. The Arc of Appalachia Preserve System now manages the site for the Ohio Historical Society and keeps the gate open from dawn to dusk daily. Site interpretation is much enhanced by the small museum, and by the old iron tower allowing visitors to get an overhead view of the sprawling creature.

Serpent Mound

The Serpent’s Builders: The effigy builders were a different, later culture than the Hopewell who created the hilltop enclosures and geometric earthworks. It was the confusingly-named “Fort Ancient” people, living in the region about 800 years after the Hopewell, who built effigies including the Great Serpent, and who had a very different way of life: they had walled villages and extensive corn agriculture, like the Mississippians down at Cahokia (near East Saint Louis, Illinois) and elsewhere.

The Serpent’s Features: Most beautiful are the snake’s perfectly spiraling tail, the three main coils (which some claim offer astronomical alignments), and the head which faces the summer solstice sunset (evening celebrations every June 21). Walk the serpent’s elegant length from the tail (overlooking a steep section of the Brush Creek cliffs), along the coils, and down past the head (or egg, or eye, or the sun).  The iconography resembles Mississippian-era serpent symbols from the same time period, found on artworks from their urban cultures farther west, even down to the poison glands that are visible alongside the effigy’s neck.

The Burial Mounds: Near the Serpent Mound parking lot is a large Adena-era (pre-Hopewell) mound, and another smaller one is next to the picnic shelter, indicating this site was important for centuries before the effigy was created. Indeed, long before humans were here at all, the vicinity of Serpent Mound was a geological anomaly, likely the result of a primordial meteor strike or volcanic crater. The serpent’s head looks out over the western rim of this now largely submerged, four-mile wide formation. (Its eastern rim is visible to the east along SR 41, just north of Locust Grove.)

Brush Creek Trails: Trails down from the edge of the trees on either side of the effigy lead through dense woods to the bottom of the valley, where trails skirt Ohio Brush Creek and offer views of a prominent stone “head” directly beneath the effigy’s head, and an undulating cliff with small caves extending to the right, directly under the effigy’s body and tail. It is easy to imagine that the effigy’s designers saw that a “serpent” was somehow already present in this distinctive hillside formation.

Cliff beneath Serpent Mound

Archaeology and Meaning: With Fosters and Turner, this is the only other site investigated by famed early archaeologist Frederick Ward Putnam. It was his effort, after returning to Harvard, that persuaded members of Boston society to preserve the site and place it into the safe-keeping of the Ohio Historical Society at an early date. Some controversy persists about the date of the monument, although recent dating from an excavation led by Dr. Brad Lepper indicates a date between AD 1000 and 1200. The Great Serpent, through its fame, has been opened up to many interpretations, for many people, groups, and traditions.  A visit during the sunset celebrations on any June 21 tells the story:  Indians from many tribes and groups, new-age mystics, earthworks enthusiasts, tourists, locals, and many others, have many varied ideas about what makes this place somehow sacred, or maybe evil, or at least spiritually loaded.

/December Luminaria, Serpent-Mound

Eating and Sleeping: In New Vienna, try the New Vienna Restaurant at 142 West Main Street (937 987 2463). In Hillsboro stop in at Magee’s downtown near the courthouse, widely known for superb breakfasts and pies. Near Serpent Mound, the Locust Grove Dairy Bar (intersection of SR 73 and SR 41) offers ice cream and snacks; in Peebles try the White Star Café. Spend the afternoon and night at Coyote Creek Farm Bed-and-Breakfast, an impeccably appointed log cabin in a serene hollow where rolling woods and pasture reflect the transitioning landscapes of the Appalachian foothills (3 miles east of Hillsboro at 8871 SR 124; 937 393 5166). Larger but a bit farther away is the Murphin Ridge Inn, on 142 acres in the northern Adams County hills, with beautiful guest rooms and gourmet dining (750 Murphin Ridge Road, West Union; 877 687 7446). Chain food and lodging are available on the highway heading north out of Hillsboro (perhaps the time to sample Ohio’s own regional restaurant brand with a loyal following, good Midwestern character, and cornmeal mush on the menu: Bob Evans) or at many of the exits along SR 32.