According to the early surveys, the Great Miami Valley was home to a very dense concentration of mounds and earthworks. Squier and Davis’s Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley illustrated multiple earthworks, especially between Colerain and Hamilton.

None of those remain visible today, although the strangely gated “Fortified Hill” of Butler County survives on a wooded hilltop on private land. Our recommended route spans from Miami Fort, one of the region’s best preserved hilltop enclosures, to the Miamisburg Mound, the most spectacularly sited of the Midwest’s large burial mounds.

Squier and Davis’s depiction of the string of valley-terrace and hilltop earthworks along the Great Miami River in Butler County, one of the densest concentrations in the region.

Great Miami Valley

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