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Wolf Plains Group

The Plains · Athens County · Southeast Ohio

Once 30 earthworks; now three mounds you can see

National Register of Historic PlacesThird-largest Adena mound complex

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A field of mounds on a Hocking Valley terrace, mostly lost to the town that grew up over them.

Originally: About 30 earthworks, including 22 conical mounds and nine circular enclosures
Setting: A flat terrace in the Hocking River valley, formed by glacial outwash
Rank: Said to be the third-largest Adena mound complex, after Chillicothe and Charleston, West Virginia
Visible today: Only about three mounds remain visible
Land: Mostly privately owned; one mound is cared for by the Athens County Historical Society
Documented: In Squier and Davis's 1848 Ancient Monuments

The story

The Plains, originally known as Wolf's Plains, sits a few miles northwest of Athens on a flat terrace left by glacial outwash in the Hocking River valley. The Adena, or perhaps the early Hopewell, built about 30 earthworks here: 22 conical mounds and nine circular enclosures. Squier and Davis featured the group in their 1848 book, working from a sketch made by S. P. Hildreth in 1836, and their finished drawing has inaccuracies: some clusters are rotated, some are missing, some misplaced.

Most of the mounds have disappeared under farms and the growing community of The Plains, and only about three remain visible. In 1989 one mound was gifted to the Athens County Historical Society, which promised to keep it as it was, and in 2008 the Archaeological Conservancy bought the site of the Dorr 2 Mound with emergency funds. Most of what survives is privately owned and vulnerable to development.

The Mounds Under The Plains

Athens is a college town, and local historians say awareness of the mounds in The Plains is low, though it is described as the third-largest Adena mound complex after Chillicothe and Charleston, West Virginia. There were once 22 conical mounds here and nine circular enclosures. Farmers plowed, developers built, and by now only a handful remain.

The ones that are left get a small band of volunteers, the Friends of the Adena Mound Group, who gather in spring to clear sticks and invasive multiflora rose from the mound the historical society looks after.

Behind the legend

The 'third largest' ranking comes from local tour material and the Southeast Ohio History Center. What is documented is the loss: the site was mapped in 1848 with about 30 earthworks, the Archaeological Conservancy bought one mound site in 2008, and most of what remains sits on private land with little legal protection. Recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the group is early Hopewell rather than Late Adena.

If you want to see it, go with a group.

If you go

Check the Southeast Ohio History Center in Athens for its mound tours, and ask about the Friends of the Adena Mound Group. Then drive the Plains roads and look at the flat terrace the mounds stood on.