World's largest Basket; The Great Circle & Octagon Earthworks near Newark; Ohio Amish country; and back to Pennsylvania!

A cross country road trip wouldn't be complete without seeing the world's largest of something, right? Well, the former seven-story corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in Newark, Ohio, is shaped like a picnic basket! Technically, it's the world's largest basket-shaped building!

When my dad worked for Procter & Gamble, which is based in nearby Cincinnati, the company sent him a woven picnic basket full of goodies each year at Christmas. Given the proximity of the two companies, I bet the baskets were Longaberger baskets.

-- The Great Circle & Octagon Earthworks --

I think the Newark Earthworks (the Great Circle and the Octagon) in Newark and Heath, Ohio, are the best preserved of all the mounds and earthworks I have seen on this trip. Below is a diagram of the Newark Earthworks. The great circle is in Newark, and the octagon and a smaller circle are in Heath. There was also a square, but it might now be part of a housing development?

The site with the Great Circle has a small museum, but it was closed today and I didn't want to stick around until tomorrow.

-- The Great Circle --

The Great Circle is a wall of mounded earth that surrounds 30 acres of land. The wall is much taller than I am. For perspective, look at the picnic tables, below, outside the wall.

When dirt was moved to create the circle, it left a moat on the circle's interior. There is speculation that it might have been filled with water and served a cerimonial purpose, but nobody knows for certain. I entered the circle through its opening, but stairs have also been added at a couple of points to allow crossing into the circle.

Many of the mounds I visited yesterday were burial mounds. One of the mounds in today's Big Circle is considered an effigy mound because it is shaped like an animal -- in this case, shaped like an eagle. The mound has three lobes, arranged like the body and wings of an eagle. That's why it is called the eagle mound.

However, when the eagle mound was excavated, traces of a longhouse and two walls were discovered. Evidently, at some point in time the people took down the structure and covered the site with the 3-lobed mound of earth. So maybe it wasn't an effigy of an eagle after all? It makes me question if the mounds currently considered effigy mounds really represent animals.

-- The Octagon and Circle --

A large octagon and circle are located across town in Heath. Native American earthworks originally joined four major structures in the Newark area: the great circle, an octagon, a smaller circle, and a square. Today, the octagon and smaller circle are part of a golf course! The land has been rented to the golf course, and people play golf around the earthworks and mounds.

The large octagon-shaped earthworks are aligned with lunar events, such as the rising of the moon. The octagon itself consists of 8 flat-topped mounds, eadh 6 feet tall, 75 to 90 feet long, and 40 to 60feet wide. I saw golf carts and putting greens in the area of the octagon.

A pair of linear earthworks connect the octagon and circle. The strip between the earthworks looks like it would make a good fairway. ☺ 

It seemed strange to have a golf course here, but at least the mounds and earthworks have been preserved better than the ones that were on farmland!

The visit to Newark and Heath finished my investigation of Native American mounds and earthworks. Maybe I'll learn more about them after I get home, but it was good getting to see them in person on this trip.

-- Ohio Amish Country --

My next major stop is Niagara Falls. I'll be passing back through Pennsylvania to get there, but on my way, I drove through some of Ohio's Amish country -- Holmes County and Millersburg. It is beautiful farming country.

I drove past, or waited for, a lot of horse-drawn vehicles along the way.

In addition to the horse and buggy transportation, a lot of people were wearing safety vests and riding bikes.

The truck driver in the following photo obviously didn't care that some of his load was being blown away. The driver behind him probably wan't very happy about it, though. 😀

Cars, including mine, had to slow down and safely pass the carriages and slow trucks. It made me wonder what the drivers felt like, always being the slow traffic that other people had to work around and pass -- especially where there isn't a shoulder.

I stopped at a market in Millersburg and admired their assortment of meat and cheeses. I ate a sandwich, a large soft pretzel, and a cup of homemade peach ice cream. The fresh ice cream was very creamy!

School had recently gotten out for the day, and I saw children walking home or getting picked up by parents.

-- The Drive to Pennsylvania --

As I drove past Stow, Ohio, I saw a sign for Skyline Chili! I wasn't hungry enough for another 5-way, but I had room to try one of their Cheese Coneys -- their version of a chili dog for cheese lovers. To save time, I ordered it "to go" and ate it in the parking lot. As a cheese lover, the cheese coney was great!

While heading back to Pennsylvania, I passed through a lot of the same towns I had seen when I first arrived in Ohio. I called ahead and found out that the Walmart in Hermitage, Pennsylvania, allows overnight parking, so that is where I am spending the night tonight. Hermitage also has a Planet Fitness, which works out well for me.

The Hopewell Native American Mounds near Chillicothe, 5-Way Skyline Chili

My goal today was to learn more about the Native American mounds in Ohio. The Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Chillicothe has a visitor center and four distinct mound sites that are open to the public, so that was today's destination.

The four mound sites are (1) the Mound City Group, (2) the Hopeton Earthworks, (3) the Hopeton Mound Group, and (4) the Seip Earthworks. The Mound City Group site has a visitor center with rangers, so that is where I started.

The rangers and a short film answered many of my questions. The first mounds in this area were discovered on a farm belonging to Mordecai Hopewell, which is how the people, culture, and mounds ended up with the name Hopewell. They left no written or oral records, so we have no idea what they called themselves. Because we have no records, these sites and people are considered prehistoric. 

Based on the archeology, the sites were used from about 1 A.D. to 400 A.D.. The sites have mounds and have earthworks that form geometric shapes. Similar sites from similar time periods have also taken on the name Hopewell, regardless whether they are anywhere near the Hopewell farm.

Native American mounds are found across the  midwestern, eastern and southeastern United  States, and span different time periods. For example, the mounds I saw in Georgia were from the Mississippian Period (800 A.D. - 1600 A.D.), whereas, the Hopeland mounds are from the Middle Woodland Period (100 B.C. - 500 A.D.).

-- The Mound City Group --

The site by the visitor center has 24 mounds of various sizes, surrounded by a mounded wall that's about 3 feet high. The archeologists who first investigated the site were very invasive, and dug up all the mounds to see what was in them. So these mounds are no longer the originals. The site was also used as a military training center during WWI, and the ground was totally cleared after the war. 

The mounds have been recreated based on the measurements recorded by the original archealogists. The original mounds weren't just dirt... they had layers of clay and sand, and were topped by a layer of gravel.

The following raised metal diagram shows the border and basic positions of the mounds.

The photos below show what the restored site looks like today. The long, narrow raised ground is part of a border referred to as earthworks.  I am standing outside the earthworks border in the photo below. The wall had two openings... one roughly on the east and the other roughly on the west. 

The mounds at this first site were burial mounds. They contained cremated remains and items buried with the dead. The buried items indicate that the Hopewells traveled and traded widely. The items included copper from the Lake Superior area, obsidian and grizzly-bear teeth from the rocky mountiains, shells from the gulf of mexico, and mica from North Carolina.

One of the mounds had sheets of mica under the cremated remains. They also found mirrors and decorative objects made from mica. An elliptical mound was surrounded by obsidian spearheads. Some were of the type of obsidian found in the Yellowstone area.

Another mound had around 200 pipes shaped like animals and carved from stone. Some archeologists think they were used for smoking tobacco during rituals. It seems like a good guess, since these are burial mounds and there are no written records to tell us.

As best they can tell, the people lived in small family groups, rather than large communities. They didn't find anything among the mounds indicating people lived there. More likely, these sites were gathering places for people spread out across the area.

Patterns of holes in the ground around some of the mounds indicate they may have constructed bent-pole buildings that looked like this.

Too bad we don't know more about them, and have to piece together a story based on the clues they've found in the ground.

-- The Hopeton Earthworks --

The second site I visited was the Hopeton Earthworks. It was made up of geometric shapes... a very large circle, large square, a couple of smaller circles, and some parallel lines going off in the distance. 

I had to walk a trail from the parking lot to an overlook. The trail had some nice flowers and interesting vegetation.

Leaves of three, let it be... must be poison ivy?

These white flowers start out as a pod of seeds that eventually spreads. That is my assumption, since I saw both on the same plant.

Here is what the earthworks look like from the overlook.

An interesting vehicle passed by on a set of train tracks behind the overlook. The vehicle has a metal guard that can be lowered to clear the area around the tracks. The guard is angled like a cow catcher and has cutouts for the rails. When lowered, the guard sweeps gravel and debris away from the rails as the vehicle moves along the tracks. It was interesting to watch it clear away gravel that had built up around the tracks. The guard is raised in the photo below, but I saw the driver lower it and clear around the tracks.

-- The Hopeton Mound Group --

The Hopeton Mound Group was by far the largest site. Two miles of earthen walls surround a relatively flat enclosed area having sides the length of 10 football fields, and a total area equivalent to 100 football fields! The area includes 32 known mounds. The area is believed to be a gathering place for the surrounding people.

Below is a diagram of the area, and a photo I took at a point on the overlook trail (from a point that would be roughly at the center top of the diagram). At that point, the trail was above part of the earthworks border, which was taller than I am.

The large field was farmed by Mr Hopewell, so some of the mounds and other earthworks have been flattened, and are much less smaller they used to be. There used to be about 40 burial mounds. The largest mound in the field was 500 feet long and 35 feet high, but it looks almost flat now!

Since it is assumed that the mounds were built by carrying baskets full of dirt, the largest mound would have taken one and a half million basketloads of dirt! That either required  a lot of people or we don't really understand their methods! The impression of a basket was found in the dirt in one mound, so maybe the archeologists right about carrying all the dirt in baskets.

People didn't live in this big flat area. It was some kind of gathering place. It is assumed that small family groups lived in clearings like the one below.

 

The following photo is of a small pond I saw while walking the trail around the earthworks.

The trail that had followed the wooded area outside the borders of the field, finally crossed into the large field its far end, and then led back across the field to where I originally started.

I think the park crew mows the grass in a way that shows where the mounds and geometric formations were. I took this photo while walking across the large field. I was blown away by the size of this gathering place!

-- The Seip Earthworks --

The final Hopewell site I visited today was the Seip Earthworks. It is pretty much an earthworks border and one huge mound. At this point in the day, I didn't even walk up to the mound. I parked next to the earthworks border (first photo) and took the mound photo (second photo) from afar.

I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on the Hopewell people and culture. The gathering places were larger than I expected. It would be interesting to know what rituals and other things were part of the gatherings. Fire pits were found... maybe they were part of cremation rituals? 

-- Skyline Chili (aka Cincinnati Chili) --

Dinner time! I was looking forward to this...

Skyline is the name of a restaurant that serves Cincinnati Chili. I visited Cincinnati with a friend of mine in the 1980s who grew up in Cincinnati, and I remember he had us eat at Skyline. Cincinnati chili is a plate of chili on a bed of spaghetti, covered with a generous amount of shredded cheddar cheese. The chili has meat and a proprietary sauce.

You can order the chili 3-way, 4-way, or 5-way. Three-way is the spaghetti and chili topped with cheese. Four-way adds either onions or beans, and five-way adds both onions and beans. I ordered 5-way, and this is how it looked:

It was really good! If you're ever in the Cincinnati area, I highly recommend having some Cincinnati chili at one of the Skyline restaurants. Skyline is a chain, and they have a restarant as far north as the Columbus area. I'm going to have to make some of this  chili myself when I get back home, and try to duplicate their chili sauce! (Maybe I can find a recipe online!)

I'm spending the night at a Walmart in the town of Newark, Ohio. Newark is another site of Native American mounds. I'll check them out tomorrow, and then I'll be done with Hopewells, earthworks, and mounds for my cross-country trip!