Five signboards at Creel Mound provide a glimpse into the culture of the Adena people, who lived in the Kanawha Valley more than 2,000 years ago.
Championed by George Washington as a route to connect coastal Virginia with the Ohio River Valley, the Midland Trail now carries travelers past sites with historic roots even deeper than those set in America's colonial past.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Championed by George Washington as a route to connect coastal Virginia with the Ohio River Valley, the Midland Trail now carries travelers past sites with historic roots even deeper than those set in America's colonial past.
The Midland Trail Scenic Highway Association recently completed the first of six planned historic interpretive sites along U.S. 60 at a structure built at about the same time as the Great Wall of China and a century or two before the Coliseum of Rome.
Five colorful interpretive panels outline the story of the Creel Mound and the Adena people who built it sometime between 500 BC and 150 AD. The mound casts a shadow over downtown South Charleston from its location just off U.S. 60-MacCorkleAvenue, which traces the route of the Midland Trail. It is one of 50 native-built mounds, walls and earthworks encountered by early settlers between present-day Charleston and Dunbar. Only three mounds have escaped obliteration.
"The idea is to use outdoor public art to pull people in and learn about places like this," said Alice Hypes, director of the Midland Trail Scenic Highway Association. A grant is paying for six interpretive sites along the historic route, now a National Scenic Byway, and Hypes said she is hopeful that additional sites will be added later.
The signs at the first site help visitors learn something about Adena culture, trade routes and technology, and describe the 1883 excavation of the Creel Mound by a party from the Smithsonian Institution.
"Engineers have estimated that it took a million baskets of dirt to build this mound," said Hypes, "and there were 50 mounds and walls just in this area." Smithsonian archeologist Cyrus Thomas, who took part in the Creel Mound's excavation, called the Spring Hill-South Charleston-Dunbar area "Ancient Kanawha City" due to its abundance of native earthworks.
The Adena people cultivated such crops as gourd squash, sunflowers and goosefoot, a flowering plant with spinach-like greens, and wove strands of milkweed stems into clothing, mats, bags and fishing nets.
Excavation of the Creel mound helped early archeologists learn that the Adena were connected by trade routes that brought in goods like copper ornaments from as far north as the Great Lakes and beads made from seashells from as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.
The Creel Mound stood 41 feet tall until sometime in the early 19th century, when settlers lopped 8 feet off its top to accommodate a judge's stand for a horse race course. When the Smithsonian crew conducted its dig in 1883, they found an elaborate burial tomb containing 13 skeletons in three areas. The largest contained the remains one body, head facing north, buried with a large flint lance, the remnants of a copper headdress and six shell beads. Surrounding that body was a semicircle of 10 other skeletons, their feet pointing toward the body, some buried with lance heads, fish darts and projectile points.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Championed by George Washington as a route to connect coastal Virginia with the Ohio River Valley, the Midland Trail now carries travelers past sites with historic roots even deeper than those set in America's colonial past.
The Midland Trail Scenic Highway Association recently completed the first of six planned historic interpretive sites along U.S. 60 at a structure built at about the same time as the Great Wall of China and a century or two before the Coliseum of Rome.
Five colorful interpretive panels outline the story of the Creel Mound and the Adena people who built it sometime between 500 BC and 150 AD. The mound casts a shadow over downtown South Charleston from its location just off U.S. 60-MacCorkleAvenue, which traces the route of the Midland Trail. It is one of 50 native-built mounds, walls and earthworks encountered by early settlers between present-day Charleston and Dunbar. Only three mounds have escaped obliteration.
"The idea is to use outdoor public art to pull people in and learn about places like this," said Alice Hypes, director of the Midland Trail Scenic Highway Association. A grant is paying for six interpretive sites along the historic route, now a National Scenic Byway, and Hypes said she is hopeful that additional sites will be added later.
The signs at the first site help visitors learn something about Adena culture, trade routes and technology, and describe the 1883 excavation of the Creel Mound by a party from the Smithsonian Institution.
"Engineers have estimated that it took a million baskets of dirt to build this mound," said Hypes, "and there were 50 mounds and walls just in this area." Smithsonian archeologist Cyrus Thomas, who took part in the Creel Mound's excavation, called the Spring Hill-South Charleston-Dunbar area "Ancient Kanawha City" due to its abundance of native earthworks.
The Adena people cultivated such crops as gourd squash, sunflowers and goosefoot, a flowering plant with spinach-like greens, and wove strands of milkweed stems into clothing, mats, bags and fishing nets.
Excavation of the Creel mound helped early archeologists learn that the Adena were connected by trade routes that brought in goods like copper ornaments from as far north as the Great Lakes and beads made from seashells from as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.
The Creel Mound stood 41 feet tall until sometime in the early 19th century, when settlers lopped 8 feet off its top to accommodate a judge's stand for a horse race course. When the Smithsonian crew conducted its dig in 1883, they found an elaborate burial tomb containing 13 skeletons in three areas. The largest contained the remains one body, head facing north, buried with a large flint lance, the remnants of a copper headdress and six shell beads. Surrounding that body was a semicircle of 10 other skeletons, their feet pointing toward the body, some buried with lance heads, fish darts and projectile points.
Signs at the Creel Mound go into more detail of the mound's excavation, and show photographs of Adena tools, ornaments, pottery and hunting and fishing gear.
The Midland Trail National Scenic Highway Association is commissioning artists to illustrate points of interest at the interpretive exhibits. Robb Clelland of Charleston has been selected to produce the artwork for a planned exhibit at the Lee Street Triangle in downtown Charleston, site of the former state Capitol building that burned down in 1921.
The next roadside exhibit scheduled to open is one planned for Virginia's Chapel at Cedar Grove, where a parking area and small park will also be built. Others will take shape in Gauley Bridge, site of a Civil War encampment and bridge-burning, and at the Hawks Nest Tunnel, where hundreds of workers were exposed to lethal doses of silica dust in the 1920s. An exhibit dealing with the journeys of Mary Draper Ingles, who was abducted by Native Americans near present-day Radford, Va., in 1755, and taken to a site along the Ohio River in Kentucky, is planned.
Travelers on West Virginia's segment of U.S. 60 are following a route initially followed by buffalo and Native Americans, and later developed, thanks to Washington's influence, as a wagon route linking the James River at Richmond with the Ohio River.
In 1784, Washington traveled down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Kanawha, and then made his way up the Kanawha River, across the Alleghenies and back to Virginia. Once home, he encouraged the construction of a route that would open the Kanawha and Ohio valleys to settlement and trade.
While Washington initially envisioned a series of locks and dams linking the Richmond area to the Kanawha Valley, his plans were altered to make the trans-Allegheny section of the route a wagon road. The road, named the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, was completed to Cedar Grove in 1790.
The Midland Trail follows the route of the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, and later U.S. 60, through six counties, stretching from Kenova on the Ohio River to White Sulphur Springs on the Virginia border.
Money to pay for the six exhibits comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the West Virginia Division of Highways, the West Virginia Department of Commerce, the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Sustainable Kanawha Valley Initiative and the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation.
Photos of Adena artifacts found in the Creel Mound and other Adena mounds in the Kanawha Valley are on display in the South Charleston Museum on D Street, a short walk from the new Mound exhibit.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.
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Good story Rick....