Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks
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How it came to be
Along the central tributaries of the Ohio River stand eight monumental earthen enclosures built between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago. They belong to the Indigenous tradition now called the Hopewell culture and include precise geometric figures and hilltops sculpted to enclose wide level plazas. They align with the cycles of the Sun and the more complex cycles of the Moon, and ritual objects made of materials from distant places have been found in them.
At Newark, earthen walls form a Great Circle about 370 metres across and an Octagon of about 50 acres. Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis surveyed such earthworks from 1837 to 1847, and their Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley became the Smithsonian Institution's first publication in 1848. In 1982 researchers from Earlham College concluded that the Octagon tracks the Moon's 18.6-year cycle.
The state used the Octagon as a militia camp from 1892 to 1908, and from 1910 it was leased to a country club as a golf course. In 2022 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state historical society could use eminent domain to buy out the lease, and the club left on 1 January 2025. With Fort Ancient and other sites, the earthworks were inscribed as a World Heritage site in September 2023.
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