Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

   As we’ve traveled north we’ve visited several other sites with large mounds built by Native American cultures. Each has been built differently and each appears to have been used differently. Some were ceremonial sites while others were cities. This one appears to have been used for burials and ceremonies. Earth was piled to form the walls of large circles and squares. The mounds built inside the enclosures were burial sites. When they were excavated evidence of careful and ritualized placement of artifacts made of rare materials was discovered. No evidence of large villages has been found.

  The site has a small museum and a short movie. Both are accessible. An interpretive trail circles around inside the site. The trail is grassy, very bumpy, and very hard to push along. The park has an all terrain, manual wheelchair, free to use, which we didn’t try because it didn’t look much different than my chair. Another trail wanders through the woods for about 1/2 mile before dead ending. It starts at the picnic tables. Pushing over the grass is necessary for a short distance but in dry weather the trail, made of dirt and small crushed stone, is easy to roll along.

  The parking lot is small but RVs can be parked in the grass along the loop. Park
  39.37567, -83.00646