The Milford Works

In my last post on The Camden Works I mentioned "The Milford Works" several times. Indeed, as the name obviously suggests, this was located in present day Milford, Ohio. In the early 19th century when it was essentially intact and being written about it was usually referred to as being "near Milford" because Milford itself was much smaller and this was located in a cornfield outside of town that is most likely a Frisch's drive-thru today. Classy.

This tremendous earthwork consisted of a square and partial circle (sound familiar?) with parallel embankments that ran up a steep bluff to a smaller circle. At this point, The Milford Works takes on one of the most remarkable formations seen anywhere. As Squier and Davis put it, "from this circle diverging lines extend to the south-west, terminating in a maze of walls unlike any others which have yet fallen under notice."  Squier and Davis made a survey of this work for Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley in 1848 and wrote about it briefly. Unlike The Camden Works, they seem to have visited this work in person and produced the following survey in their book.

 

The authors note that "from the hill an extensive prospect is afforded, bringing in view the sites of several large groups of works in the vicinity." This suggests that The Milford Works, perhaps in conjunction with Camden and The Turner Works, could have been used as part of a larger plan. This has also been suggested with the Alligator Effigy Mound in Granville, Ohio, which offers a connected view to the nearby extensive Newark Earthworks.

 

So you probably know where I am going with this next. I have to figure out where it was. Like all earthworks that were destroyed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there are debates about exactly where it was located. Squier and Davis note that as early as 1848 the walls were "much reduced, and when the crops are on the ground, are hardly traceable."

 

The Squier and Davis survey does not give many clues except for the placement of the river bed and a high bluff and the road labeled "Milford Chillicothe Turnpike" which today is US Rt. 50. Some stretches of it in this area are still known by another 19th Century name for it- "Wooster Pike". So wherever it was, it has to straddle Rt. 50 and be close to the East Fork. When I went over this in my head I kept turning the map and the survey and looking at the landmarks and trying to fit this in. Then, one day, as I was standing in the river bottoms along the East Fork I looked back at Milford and suddenly it made sense. Check it out:

 

 

Here you can see the East Fork about where it appears on the map, you can see where the square crosses US 50, and you can see the high bluff that is Greenlawn Cemetery in Milford. This overlooks the valley below along the East Fork, which today is a shopping area called "Milford Parkway." So I thought I had solved it. But something kept bothering me.

 

Two things, actually. It was a couple of notes that Squier and Davis made about the location. One of the first things they note about this earthwork is that "it occupies the third terrace, which is here broad and fertile." Well the location I gave it puts it on the first terrace, extending up to the second. My second problem comes from the location of the river. Squier and Davis wrote that "an inspection of this work shows clearly that the irregularity of the great circle is due to the nature of the ground, and that the terrace bank bordering the old bed of the East Fork existed at the period of the construction of the work. The river now flows a considerable distance to the southward." See that's a problem, because I have the East Fork still flowing just below the location where the great circle would have been. So where else could it have been?

 

I was starting to think it really was lost for all time. But every time I seem to think that I just dig a little deeper and usually a new character emerges who can shed some light on it.

 

And that's the cue for a World War I flying Ace named Dache Reeves to enter the story. I couldn't tell you much about his early life, but he was born in 1894 and like most young men in what would be coined "The Lost Generation", he served in the Great War, specializing in balloon reconnaissance and aerial photography. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action over France in 1918. Just read the account of what happened for yourself:

 

"While performing an important aerial mission in his balloon, Lieutenant Reeves was attacked by enemy airplanes. He hung from his basket under fire from enemy machine guns until the balloon burst into flames, when he jumped. He re-ascended as soon as another balloon could be inflated, although the air was strongly patrolled by the enemy. On 23 October near Gesnes (Meuse), he was in the basket with another observer when a circus of fifteen enemy airplanes made an attack from above. He remained in the basket until forced to jump. This officer showed extraordinary heroism be re-ascending as soon as another balloon could be made ready. Two hours later, while engaged in locating enemy batteries from his balloon, he was again attacked and the balloon burst into flames, forcing him to jump once more. In spite of these experiences this officer continued his mission in another balloon."

 

Wow. I've got to say that I'm blown away to read that the Army just kept sending this guy up in a hot air balloon during a WAR, even though every time he went up the balloon was immediately attacked by airplanes and he just had to hang from the basket(!) while they shot it up until it burst into flames. Then he would "jump" and survive. And was that enough for one day? Oh no. He would immediately start filling up a new balloon. This guy was like a Navy Seal of hot air balloons. Insane. You deserve the medal, sir.

Here is a photo of Lt. Reeve's medal. I cant find a picture of the actual guy so this will have to do.

 

 

I know it seems like I am getting way off topic but let me tie it in. After the war, Dache became interested in Anthropology and by the 1920s he had discovered that by using aerial photography he could still discern the lines of ancient earthworks even if the land they were on had been plowed over repeatedly. Well, luckily for us, in 1934 he captured a partial photo of The Milford Works. Take a look at this photo set I found from an actual place called The Earthworks Conservancy. Using Reeve's photo and later aerial photos that still showed traces of the eastern wall of the square, this earthwork can be fit onto this upper terrace:

 

So according to The Earthworks Conservancy and based on Reeve's photo, Rt 50 crossed the square just in front of Kroger/Frischs and then down by the Shopping Center/AutoZone. This puts the smaller circle and the diverging lines up the bluff along Robbie Ridge running southwest with the maze-like wall sterminating around Wallace Grove Lane, a high spot over the Valley View property and the river valley along the East Fork. These areas below Wallace Grove are known to have been have the sites of Woodland Culture villages at various points in pre-history. Now it makes sense that the bluff at the edge of the cemetery is "the terrace bank bordering the old bed" of the East Fork. In other words, when the Mound Builders created this earthwork, the river ran just below the bluff it sat on!

 

Further evidence that this is the actual location comes from one of Milford's earliest settlers, Rev. Philip Gatch. Born in Maryland in 1751, he was a  preacher who travelled by horseback spreading the unpopular religion "Methodism". An ardent abolitionist when everyone else in Maryland was loving having slaves, people there pretty much hated this guy. Here is his own account of how his eye was permanently maimed when attacked with hot tar by a pr0-slavery mob near Baltimore:

 

"The man called out for more tar, adding that I was true blue. He laid it on liberally. At length one of the company cried out in mercy- 'it is enough.' The last stroke made with the paddle with which the tar was applied, was drawn across the naked eyeball, which caused severe pain, from which I never entirely recovered."

 

Basically this guy needed to get out of Maryland. His travels eventually led him to present-day Milford, which he referred to as "at the forks of the Miami". In 1799 he built a cabin in what is present day Greenlawn Cemetery. In fact, the oldest tombstones in the cemetery belong to Rev. Gatch and his family. This was their family burying ground, which was later expanded to include others from Milford as well. Once here he established the first Methodist church in the Northwest Territory and is credited with having spread the religion westward. He was also a member of the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1802. We know from the map that The Milford Works partially covered land on his farm so I thought surely he must have made mention of this tremendous earthwork in some of his papers, and it turns out he did. In an 1832 autobiography he wrote:

 

"The Land I bought proclaims a great population in past ages, ingenious and powerful; a People innured to hard labor; There is about 50 Acres inclosed by Walls, and Moun[d]s raised; the enquiry is, who hath performed all this; Not the Indians, they know nothing about it, as they say."

 

 

Gatch is referring to the Shawnee or Miami when he says "the Indians" and as they had no knowledge of who built the mounds, Gatch, like many of his contemporaries, assumed it was a much more advanced civilization than any Native Americans they had encountered. Gatch's own theory was that they had been built by an ancient band of travelling Chinese, possibly he thought these walls resembled the Great Wall he had certainly heard of.  He once explained the origin of the earthwork by saying:

 

"I am inclined to think that the Chinese & Tartars once dwelt here: the Chinese

are a laborious people possessed of mechanical ingénue."

 

While we are fairly certain that prehistoric earthworks and mounds in this area were not the handiwork of the Chinese, our explanations for their uses are, like Gatch's, really just educated guesses.

 

Squier and Davis wrote of The Milford Works that "it has been suggested that the structures upon the hill were devoted to rites analogous to those attending the primitive hill or grove worship of the East."

 

It is possible that these works were aligned with the rising and setting sun, perhaps even the constellations above. It is not too far fetched to imagine the long diverging lines of The Milford Works stretching out westward toward the last rays of the setting sun. I like discovering that Philip Gatch and Dash Reeves and even Squier and Davis all had the same curiosity I do about who built these and why. For me, the mystery is part of the fascination.

 

 





The Camden Works

I have a lot of sites that I want to cover but The Camden Works is particularly close to my heart because it was located in Terrace Park, Hamilton County, Ohio, where I live. It makes sense that the spot occupied by the village of Terrace Park today would have been attractive to the mound builders. It is a flat, fertile terrace located high on a bluff above the confluence of the Little Miami and the East Fork; just the sort of spot they seemed to prefer.

Also I should explain that the name "Camden Works" was given because "Terrace Park" didn't exist until 1893. Before that time, a serious effort was made to name the town Camden City. Today all traces of Camden are gone with exception of the pillars at the bottom of Drewry Farm Lane and Wooster Pike. They still read "Camden Terrace Farm", for an early estate on the hill.

Proposed layout for "Camden City", about 1857. "Newtown Rd" is Elm Avenue, the building marked "J.Iuen" was Iuen's Tavern, current site of UDF. Only "Washington St." would make it to Terrace Park.

The first white settlers who arrived here in 1791 most certainly noticed the mounds and earthworks but made no mention of them in surviving papers. It wasn't until the early 19th century, when Cincinnati had become a leading American city that interest in these earthworks began to be documented. The first Cincinnatian to take a serious interest and survey these earthworks was William Lytle, who made an enormous amount of money surveying lands in this area that were given as Revolutionary War grants to veterans. The Lytles had essentially founded the city, William personally founded the University of Cincinnati, and they were considered the first landed millionaires in the West. On a side note, the Lytle's gave the land where their family mansion once stood to be a park for the City of Cincinnati in perpetuity. Later when the city wanted to put a highway through the park they were blocked by the conditions of the gift and the result is Lytle Tunnel, which today runs the highway underneath the park instead. Pretty cool.

Willaim Lytle II, first to survey The Camden Works at Terrace Park

 Lytle drew the following survey of The Camden Works which was reproduced in a work titled "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis for The Smithsonian in 1848.

This is the sketch of The Camden Works produced by Lytle and reproduced by Squire and Davis in 1848.

So what are you looking at in this sketch? This is an aerial view of the earthen walls that made up the amazing formation. The circle and the square were common themes seen in the mound builder's construction, and the long, parallel walls that connect them are an often repeated feature as well. The walls are opened at the corners and in the center of each long stretch with a semi-circular enclosure on one side. How big was it? Hard to say. We are not even sure exactly how it was oriented. Squier and Davis note very little about it saying, "The work indicated by the letter A is situated upon the opposite side of the Little Miami, from that last described. The plan, which is also from a survey by Gen Lytle, sufficiently explains its character. Several mounds occur in the vicinity of this work...".

Unfortunately, the plan by Gen. Lytle does not sufficiently explain its character. At all. I don't know what Squier and Davis are even talking about. It looks like an alien crop circle, there's no indication of direction, orientation, and there are no labeled landmarks such as the river. Luckily, they do mention that similar surveys appear in "Hugh Williamson's work on the climate of America." Yes! Easy enough to find that book, right? Wrong. Impossible to find that book.

Well, almost impossible. J. Huston McCullough, PhD. at Ohio State University did locate Williamson's book on climate for a paper he wrote on the East Fork Works (again, something for a future post). He shows the Camden Works together with the Milford Works on each side of the river:

Wow- a lot more information here. This is a map showing The Camden Works in relation to The Milford Works and the river! This blew me away because you can clearly see the East Fork branching off below. This map, rough as it is, I believe pre-dates the Lytle survey making it the earliest I have found. If you follow the key to this map, it would indicate that the large square is up on the bluff running above the nature preserve in Terrace Park and along Miami Avenue, with the long parallel embankments running down the hillside to the river bottoms where the circle was located, perhaps near present day Edgewater. But again, scale is a huge issue and its hard to tell where this was, exactly. Fascinating!

Then something peculiar happens. Suddenly the description of the Camden Works changes completely. In 1922 book on nearby earthworks, Charles Clark Willoughby described the Camden Works as pictured above saying:

"....A mile or two to the north across the Little Miami River [from the Milford Works] lie the Camden Works consisting of a square and circular enclosure with connecting embankments. Several mounds belong to this group. The Milford and Camden Works were surveyed many years ago by General Lytle of Cincinnati. The plans were reproduced by Squier and Davis who describe them briefly."

I know I keep mentioning the Milford Works and they are equally mysterious and fascinating and I will write more about them in another post later. But I want to get back to the changing description of The Camden Works. So far I have shown you the drawing made by Williamson, a survey done by William Lytle sometime between probably 1801-1809 (family papers show his work attracted the attention of President Jefferson so I'm giving it these years), the description given by Squier and Davis, and a 1923 publication that describes them as well, but clearly used some old sources, possibly (or probably) the same ones we looked at.

Now enter Dr. Charles Metz, a Victorian physician in the prominent Madisonville neighborhood of Cincinnati. He also has a passion for the mound builders and his name will come up often in this blog as he had his hands in sites all over the valley. Dr. Metz describes The Camden Works much differently in his October 1878 paper on "The Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley" where he describes it as follows:

 "In the southeast corner of Section 29 at the village of Camden and 300 feet east of the south line of Mr. Galloway's residence is the corner of an embankment which extends east and south to the river. It extends 3/4 of a mile east until it reaches the bank of the river which is here about 40 feet high. The other running south until it reaches the edge of the gravel ridge and then runs east to the river. It encloses from 800 to 1000 acres of ground. This embankment 50 years ago was six feet high and twelve feet wide. It is now scarcely traceable."

 "Mr. Galloway's residence" is a historic home in Terrace Park known as "Gravelotte", situated on Elm Avenue across from the Elementary School, seen here:

So from this description it appears to be an earthen wall that ran roughly from this property straight back to the bluff over the river on Miami, with a second wall running from the property straight towards the bluff on Princeton, then following the ridgeline back to the river. This became the accepted version of The Camden Works. It would have looked something like this:

 Are you freaking out about how awesome this map is? I know- I'm like a professional cartographer.

  So this description of an earthen wall that enclosed some acres at the southern end of the village is what became accepted as the The Camden Works, completely disregarding the amazing earthworks that had been mapped earlier. How did this happen?

Hard to say. Willoughby describes the circle, square and parallel embankments and also adds the mysterious line, "A few less important detached works in the form of circles, parallelograms and parallel embankments lie not far distant." This would indicate even more geometric earthworks in present day Terrace Park or on the river flats nearby, but there is no mention of those again anywhere- and Willoughby himself makes no mention of the earthen wall at all. And what about Dr. Metz stating that the walls enclosed 800 to 1000 acres? Certainly that is a miscalculation unless he is describing a scale much larger than I can picture.

 McCullough suggests that The Camden Works (which he only refers to as part of The Milford Works) were located further north, with the large square up on the bluff of Shawnee Run Road in Indian Hill and the smaller circle somewhere near Michigan Drive in Terrace Park. Is it possible that the greater Camden Works was located here and the earthen wall formation described by Metz is part of the "few less important detached works" described by Willoughby? Hard to say today.

 And just to make matters even worse, a contemporary of Dr. Metz, Clyde Thomas, wrote in 1894 that Squier and Davis lied about the Camden Works altogether saying "Some of the singular works described and figured...are to a large extent imaginary. Of these we may name Nos. 1 and 2, Pl. XXXIV of that work." Well The Camden Works is half of No. 2. I have to say I find this really hard to believe. Why would William Lytle, a wealthy businessman, hike out to the wilderness twenty five miles from home to draw fake surveys? It would be one thing if The Camden Works were proposed to be some ridiculously elaborate animal effigy, but not a simple geometric design like this. That would hardly be worth his time. Anyway it's hard to imagine Lytle, a man of social and political prominence and a leader in business purposely deceiving President Thomas Jefferson. Scroll back up to his portrait if you need assurance. Nope, definitely not the face of a guy who makes up maps for fun.

 

But here's a theory I am proposing: Lets say that when Lytle first came to "Terrace Park" in the first years of the 19th century the earthwork was still entirely intact, with the large square on the high plateau of Terrace Park extending roughly from Douglas Avenue to the bluff on Miami, down to the end of the bluff above Edgewater, back along the bluff at the ends of Lexington, Yale, Floral, and Myrtle, along the bluff to Valley View Lane, then back to Douglas. The parallel embankments would then extend down the hillside to the circle in the bottoms along present-day Edgewater, placing it at the confluence of the two rivers. It would have looked roughly like so:

 Map Drawing Skills: F-



I know that my parallel embankments look short, but remember that they are extending down a steep hill so they appear short from above. Ok, so fast forward to when Dr. Metz visits the site in the 1870s. He describes what is left of it by that time and it looks a little something like this:

 Seriously, I am probably going to get a job making maps because I am obviously amazing at it.

Metz notes that by the time he first saw The Camden Works, it was "scarcely traceable" but "50 years ago was six feet high and twelve feet wide." So he is referencing the way it looked around 1820. Ellis Rawnsley, in his 1992 book, "A Place Called Terrace Park", says that the walls enclosed 80 acres at the southern end of the village, which would correspond to my proposed location and is closer to Williamson's mention that the square encloses 60 acres. For this to be right, I am speculating that the scales of the earlier surveys were not correct but since neither Metz or Lytle could agree on the scale, I am suggesting a third plausible scale.

 And whatever the shape might have been, what were these earthworks used for?

The truth is that we don't know. For decades people believed they were forts or points of military defense, but today most scholars feel that they were related to the spirituality of the mound builders. They lived in a world dominated by Nature. Summer thunderstorms echoing through the valley, spring flowers, the winter winds- everything probably had significance for them. Some feel that these earthworks provided a place to gather and worship whatever they worshipped. Certainly it would have taken the labor of many to complete such a huge work, but archeological evidence does not suggest a large population living together here. It is likely that the mound builders lived in small villages close to each other and used these earthworks as central gathering locations. We do know that The Camden Works and various mounds in and around Terrace Park were excavated. There was a mound at the end of Douglas Avenue, and a large mound about where Wooster Pike meets Western Ave. Metz notes casually that pottery was discovered but we have no further information about what it looked like or where it is now. It is unfortunate too because he noted that the amount of artifacts recovered from the Camden Works made it "the most interesting and unique" site. Unfortunately all of that is lost to time.





The Turner Earthworks

Of all the prehistoric earthworks that were ever destroyed along the Little Miami, one of the greatest losses was that of the Turner Earthworks, a tremendous geometric set of mounds and works located on several elevated terraces along Round Bottom Road, less than a mile from the Odd Fellow's Cemetery mounds. Today it is difficult to picture the way it must have looked as the site was completely destroyed by gravel mining operations after World War Two. The Ohio Historical Society gives the following description of the layout:

"The Turner Earthworks included a large, oval enclosure, referred to as the Great Enclosure, connected by a set of parallel walls to a smaller circular enclosure situated on a higher terrace of the river. The Great Enclosure was 1500 feet long and 950 feet wide. The circular enclosure was 600 feet in diameter and was surrounded by a ditch. Two smaller circles and several mounds were built within the Great Enclosure and there were other mounds within the circle as well as outside the enclosure to the west. A long, narrow enclosure with rounded ends was located south of the circle. This "Long Enclosure" was nearly a half-mile long and 250 feet wide."

I also have to include this incredible map overlay done by a guy who I'd like to meet named Sean Chaney. He has a great site about earthworks all over this area. You should check it out here, http://www.seanchaney.com/app/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24&Itemid=38

 but don't check it out for too long, it kind of kicks my little blog's ass.

 

In the late 1800s, Frederick Ward Putnam led several excavations of prehistoric earthworks in this area for the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Unfortunately, these guys were only wanted one thing- relics. They tore everything apart looking for pottery and pipes and axe heads and whatever they could cart off back to Harvard and they hit the jackpot when it came to the Turner Group of Earthworks. They found the remnants of altars and hearths, many burials and fantastic grave goods including items made of mica, copper, carved bone and exotic materials.

Check out these mica ornaments found at the Turner Group. Look at the depictions of bears at the top (Black Bears were common in this area at that time). Also note the comic face silhouette.

This is an unbelievable serpent effigy made from mica found at the site. The serpent was an important part of the spirituality of the mound builders and this motif was used extensively with the most well known example being the Great Serpent Mound in Adams County.

These are grizzly bear teeth inlaid with pearls. I'm serious. Grizzlies never inhabited this valley so these are evidence of the Hopewell extensive trading network. Freshwater pearls were found in the Little Miami. Putnam took these during his excavation and they are in the Peabody Museum today.

Groundstone Hematite cups/bowls. Taken by Putnam in 1886 from a burial within

The Great Enclosure.

Shell beads, re-strung. Taken from a burial within The Great Enclosure by Ernest Volk for The Peabody in 1905. Described as "under the neck of 58001." I tried to locate a photo of the remains of "58001" but couldn't find one. That's the problem with early 20th century excavations. It seems as though they wanted the beads and didn't bother to document the way they looked at the scene of discovery either by photography or sketch.

 

 

Another major discovery at the Turner site was a cache of human effigies depicting the mound builders, giving us a rare glimpse of the way they looked, dressed, groomed themselves and viewed each other. It is so fascinating and extensive I am going to have to save it for a post of its own....