Crowning a hilltop park southeast of Miamisburg’s quaint, historic downtown, the Miamisburg Mound is one of the largest Adena era burial mounds in North America, and certainly the most spectacularly situated. It contains 54,000 cubic yards of earth.

There were two burial vaults: one was 8 feet from the top and contained a bark-covered grave; another was found 36 feet down, a chamber built of logs but containing no skeletal remains. Climbing the 116 steps to the top of the earthwork affords a splendid, clear view of the surrounding 36-acre park, and the Great Miami Valley almost in its entirety from the hills west of Cincinnati to the tops of downtown Dayton’s skyscrapers.

The sweeping views suggest why this high, prominent hilltop was important to the builders, and perhaps why they went to all this effort to make it even higher. (The only larger Adena burial mound in existence is the Grave Creek Mound, in Moundsville, West Virginia, located on the Ohio River 15 miles south of Interstate 70 at Wheeling.)

The pure conical form of the Miamisburg Mound stands atop a high bluff, offering views far up and down the Great Miami valley.

Great Miami Valley

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