Grave Creek Mound

Grave Creek Mound is a cone of more than 57,000 tons of earth, moved basket-load by basket-load by Adena culture communities between about 250 and 150 BC, with burials laid in vaults at different levels as it rose. It is among the largest of the Adena mounds, originally ringed by a ditch and causeway, and the town of Moundsville grew up around it. The operator's own page states plainly that the mound and other earthworks are sacred sites to Native Americans and asks visitors to conduct themselves with respect.

The mound's modern history includes a famous scar: the 1838 excavation by local amateurs, which drove tunnels into the vaults and set off a century of treasure-hunting that destroyed most of the smaller earthworks of the flats. The Delf Norona Museum now interprets the Adena world, the first professional study in the 1970s dated the construction, and the complex runs an active archaeological research center and public programs.

Visiting

Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex (801 Jefferson Avenue, Moundsville WV) is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9am to 4:30pm, with free museum admission; guided group tours by reservation.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_Creek_Mound%2C_Moundsville%2C_West_Virginia%2C_USA%2C_2_Nov_2019.jpg), CC0, Shonebrooks.