Fort Ancient: A porous wall

Many people who are at least a little interested in American prehistory have heard of Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. I visited there over 5 years ago, and it is an impressive sight. But I was only recently listening to an audiobook about North American prehistory when I learned that Ohio is peppered with prehistoric sites. In March of this year, Jane and I visited another remarkable prehistoric site in Ohio, Fort Ancient.

Fort Ancient, a national historic landmark, is the largest prehistoric hilltop enclosure in the US. The site is so special that it is on a list to be nominated for World Heritage status (like Stonehenge or the Great Wall of China). Fort Ancient is a roughly hourglass-shaped area of around 100 acres enclosed by 3-1/2 miles of earthen walls on a bluff overlooking the Little Miami River in southwest Ohio. It was built by the Hopewell culture people who lived in the area around 2,000 years ago. According to the Fort Ancient website, the height of the walls varies from 5 to almost 25 feet. Imagine building a 3-1/2 mile wall that tall with dirt that you dug up using a deer’s shoulder blade and a sharp stick! Imagine carrying that dirt who knows how far in who knows how many 30-pound baskets!  No wonder it took about 400 years to build (according to archaeologists).

Early investigators assumed that Fort Ancient was a defensive enclosure, but experts now think otherwise.  For one thing, there is a ditch along the wall, but it is on the inside.  For another, the wall is not continuous.  The wall looks almost like a dotted line.  There are 84 openings in the 3-1/2 mile wall.  Gates, gaps, or whatever they are, these would have been hard to defend if defense were the purpose of this site.  People now think that the wall enclosed a social and ceremonial center.  There are signs that the enclosed space is aligned to account for celestial sighting.  There are certain structures inside the enclosure that are dedicated to astronomy.  According to one blogger, the gaps are part of that astronomical function too, but there was no reference for this assertion, and I could not find another source to support that.  Although the earthworks were created by people of the Hopewell culture 2,000 years ago, the site was later inhabited by people of the Native American culture called the Fort Ancient culture.  Interestingly, it was people of the Fort Ancient culture who created Serpent Mound.

Visiting Fort Ancient

Fort Ancient became Ohio’s first state park in the late 19th century.  It is now known as the Fort Ancient Earthworks and Nature Preserve and is operated by the Ohio History Connection.  It is not far from Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati.  The park is open March through November, Tuesday through Saturday.  The museum and gift shop open at 10 and close at 5:00 PM. Regular adult admission is $7 with discounts for students, children, and seniors.  If you don’t wish to take advantage of the gift shop and museum, a fee of $8 per car is charged.  Like many gathering places, the park has been closed during the global health emergency.

Jane and I arrived in the middle of the afternoon.  Since we were there in early March, there wasn’t a big crowd.  It’s a big place, and we didn’t have enough time to see everything. If you want to see everything, get there early, bring a lunch, and dress for Ohio’s ever-changing weather.  We started with the museum, but we were traveling with our dogs, so we went in separately.  A thoughtful walk through the museum would take three hours, especially if you’re like me and like to read all the legends. The museum exhibits explore three periods in American history and prehistory: the earliest Americans who came into the area between 10 and 20 thousand years ago; the transition of these earliest Americans from hunter-gatherers to farmers; then their clash with European settlers.  There are touchable exhibits including many reproduced artifacts.  The museum even features an outdoor garden with crops that would have been planted by the Hopewell and Fort Ancient peoples.

Outdoors, some of the site is grassy and open, but a lot is wooded.  The site includes 2.5 miles of trails, a picnic area, and two very scenic overlooks.  The trails are reported to range in difficulty from easy to difficult.  With time short, we could not take advantage of these trails, but we did walk out to a beautiful scenic overlook!

Even if archaeology, anthropology, and prehistory aren’t your thing, you can’t help but be impressed by the earthworks of Fort Ancient.  It’s well worth the short drive from Interstate 71, and I will visit the subject of Fort Ancient in the near future in this blog.

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