Great Serpent Mound
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Great Serpent Mound
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The Great Serpent Mound - an ancient Native American effigy in Adams County, Ohio.
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| Nearest city | Peebles, Ohio |
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| Coordinates | 39°1′33.09″N 83°25′49.60″W / 39.0258583°N 83.4304444°WCoordinates: 39°1′33.09″N 83°25′49.60″W / 39.0258583°N 83.4304444°W |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000602 |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot (411 m)-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound on a plateau of the Serpent Mound crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. Maintained within a park by the Ohio History Connection, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of Interior. The Serpent Mound of Ohio was first reported from surveys by Ephraim Squire and Edwin Davis in their historic volume Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, published in 1848 by the newly founded Smithsonian Museum.
Researchers have attributed construction of the mound to three different prehistoric indigenous cultures. Originally thought to be Adena in origin, a 1996 carbon dating study led scholars to believe the mound was built by members of the Fort Ancient culture around 1070 AD. Most recent dating places the mound at around 300 BC, once again suggesting Adena construction. Serpent Mound is the largest serpent effigy in the world.
Including all three parts, the Serpent Mound extends about 1,376 feet (419 m), and varies in height from less than a foot to more than three feet (30–100 cm). Conforming to the curve of the land on which it rests, with its head approaching a cliff above a stream, the serpent winds back and forth for more than eight hundred feet and seven coils, and ends in a triple-coiled tail. The serpent head has an open mouth extending around the east end of a 120-foot (37 m)-long hollow oval feature that may represent the snake eating an egg, though some scholars posit that the oval feature symbolizes the sun, the body of a frog, or merely the remnant of a platform. The effigy's extreme western feature is a triangular mound approximately 31.6 feet (9.6 m) at its base and long axis. There are serpent effigies in Scotland and Ontario that are very similar.
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