Project 2 - Layout - Effigy Mounds National Monument - more interesting information...

In my earlier blog post about the Effigy Mounds, I neglected to give more interesting information about the site.  The park boasts hundreds of preserved Native American Indian burial mounds.  While there are other mounds from the Midwest to the Atlantic coast, the unique thing is that these are the ONLY ONES that are in the form of animals, or effigies.  They are shaped as birds, bears and sometimes even reptiles.  The more than 200 mounds here represent 2000 years of mound building along the upper Mississippi River.  The mounds date back to 500BC and there are 12 different Indian tribes represented.  The park also contains the largest effigy still remaining, the Great Bear Mound, photo from the National Park Services website.

The map below I thought I found earlier on the National Parks website but I had to google it to find it again on a tourist's blog... I've rotated the photo to match the map.