Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site

Wickliffe Mounds is the site of a Mississippian town that stood on a bluff above the Ohio River a few miles from its confluence with the Mississippi. At its center are two large platform mounds with at least eight smaller mounds around a central plaza, and archaeologists link the site to the Angel phase of Mississippian culture documented along the lower Ohio River. It was a ceremonial and administrative center of a hereditary chiefdom whose maize agriculture supported a population in the hundreds, with trade connections reaching as far as North Carolina, Wisconsin, and the Gulf of Mexico. Occupation is generally dated from about 1000 to 1350 CE, after which the population moved toward the Twin Mounds site near the river confluence.

The site's modern history is part of its story. In 1932 the lumberman and amateur archaeologist Fain King paid for excavations and ran the place as a tourist attraction called the Ancient Buried City, with sensational advertising that professional archaeologists of the time criticized; burials dug from the cemetery mound were displayed for decades. The site later passed to Western Baptist Hospital, then to Murray State University in 1983, joined the National Register in 1984, and became Kentucky's 11th State Historic Site in 2004. Today Native American practice prohibits display of the dead: the excavated burials have been reinterred and the excavations refilled, and the museum stands over the filled pits. Chickasaw Nation consultation has shaped the site's interpretation in recent years, and the grounds are best treated as an ancestral place rather than an attraction.

Visiting

The Kentucky State Parks page for Wickliffe Mounds is the official source. From April 1 to October 31 the grounds are open Wednesday through Sunday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, with the museum and welcome center open 9:00 to 4:30; the site is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and open by appointment November through March. Entry is $8.00 for adults, $6.00 for seniors 62 and over and for veterans, and $5.00 for kids 5 to 15 (official rates, verified October 2026). Walk the mound grounds, the museum exhibits, and the 200-yard Woods Walk Trail; call 270-335-3681 to confirm.

Photo: Bpluke01, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wickliffe_Mounds_Panorama.jpg))