Ancient Adena Hopewell Earthwork in Butler County, Ohio
It occurs in Oxford township, Butler county, Ohio (Lot 6, Sec. 31, Tp. 5, Range 2, E. M.), at a point on Four Mile creek, where that stream forms a remarkable bend, constituting a peninsula one thousand and sixty feet across at its neck, and one thousand three hundred and twenty feet deep. This peninsula is, in fact, a bold head-land, with precipitous banks, rising sixty feet above the water in the creek, and overlooking the low bottoms that surround it. Across the neck of this peninsula is carried a crescent-shaped wall with an outer ditch. The wall is now but little over three feet in height, and the ditch of corresponding depth. Formerly it was much higher, precluding cultivation. It has been reduced by the present occupant, who has ploughed along it longitudinally, throwing the furrows into the ditch,—a common practice, which is fast reducing and obliterating these interesting monuments of antiquity. A single gateway twenty feet wide leads into the enclosure, which has an area of twenty acres. A terrace, apparently artificial, and thirty feet wide, occurs on the northern bank, at about midway from the water to the top. It may be a natural feature, and caused by the subsidence of the bank from the undermining of the stream. The creek, at one time, unquestionably ran close under the banks of the peninsula; whether or not the recession, leaving the intervening low bottom, B, took place subsequently to the erection of the work, it is of course impossible to determine.
In this work will be remarked the lapping round of the parapet, on the natural bank of the stream at b,—a feature heretofore mentioned, as probably designed to protect the flank of the defence.
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