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Story Mound (Chillicothe)

Chillicothe · Ross County · Southern Ohio

An Adena mound with a wooden house buried in it

National Register of Historic PlacesOhio History Connection state memorial

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Content last reviewed: September 2026 — this is when Field Notes Ohio's content was last checked, not a live status.
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A neat Adena mound in a Chillicothe neighborhood, opened in 1897 to reveal the outline of a wooden house.

Size: 19.5 feet high, 95 feet across at the base
Excavated: May 1897 by Clarence Loveberry for the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society
Found inside: The first documented circular Adena timber building, a young man's burial and three caches of artifacts, including six flint spear points
Setting: A Chillicothe neighborhood, about a quarter-mile from the Adena estate
Owner: Acquired by the State of Ohio in 1950 and managed by the Ohio History Connection

The story

Story Mound is a large rounded earthen mound on slightly less than an acre in a Chillicothe neighborhood, near Cherokee and Delano streets. It stands 19.5 feet high and 95 feet across at the base, and the Adena people built it sometime between 800 BCE and 100 CE. The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society partly excavated it in May 1897. At the base, the archaeologists found traces of wooden posts set in a circle about 15 feet across: the outline of a circular timber building, the first documented example of the kind of structure the Adena used for ceremony and living.

Along the north wall of the building the builders had buried a young man, and they placed three groups of artifacts inside the circle, one of them a set of six flint spear points. The state acquired the mound in 1950. The Adena culture is named for the Adena estate, only a quarter-mile away.

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The House Under the Hill

Nobody who walks by Story Mound today would guess what is inside it. When the archaeologists dug down through the center in 1897, they found a house. Not a house of logs and mud, since that had rotted away centuries before, but a ring of dark post holes about 15 feet across, marking where a circular wooden building once stood. The builders had put a young man to rest along its north wall, laid out some spear points and jewelry, and then piled the earth over it all.

That ring of posts turned out to be the key to understanding how the Adena built: they raised a wooden house first, used it, and then covered it with a mound.

Behind the legend

The excavation is documented by the Ohio History Connection and a historical marker on the site, though one source spells the archaeologist's name Loveberry and another Loverberry. The skeleton was surrounded by jewelry, beads and projectile points. The mound was given to the state in 1950 and listed on the National Register in 1973.

The marker adds that the Adena were the ancestors of the Hopewell, whose earthworks are at the national park a few miles north.

If you go

Find Story Mound on Delano Avenue and look at the size of it from the sidewalk. Then walk or drive a quarter-mile to the Adena estate, where the culture got its name.