The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1909-03-18
GREAT MOUND
WILL Be SAVED
West Virginia Legislature Appropriat-
ed $4,000 to Buy Monument.

Moundsville, w. Va, located on
the Grave Creek Flats near the
Ohio riyer-the greatest monu-
ment of antiquity in the Ohio val
ley and a tremendous memorial of
the original life of the prehistoric
people will be purchased by the
people of West Virginia.
At the session of the state legis-
lature just ended, following I'M
ceasing activity for 20 years, the
state appropriated $4,000 with
which to save the mound from the
ravages of modern commercialism
and Governor Dawson approved
the bill before leaving the office.
This sum together with a donation
of S., 900 from the McFadden heirs,
the owners Of the property and
similar donation from the school
children of the State is sufficient
to secure the Mound for the State.
A quarter of a century ago the
late G.. S. McFadden purchased
the mound to prevent it being sold
to German who knew the value
of the spot for popular resort and
intended placing saloon on the
summit. Several months ago the
heirs of McFadden served notice
that they had held the Mound as
long as possible and it would be
sold at once. The State officials
secured an option on the property
and finally appropriated suffici-
ent sum to purchase the Mound.
The Mound at Moundsville is
the largest in America and was
discovered by Joseph Tomlinson
i'll 1910, the first pioneer settler in
that section of the country. Stand
ing in broad valley of4 900 acres
it afforded a view of the surround
ing country for several miles.
Relative to the age of the
Mound, little is known. Tomlin-
son, the discover, stated that when
he discovered it and first mounted
its summit, then ninety feet high,
the timber on the mound was as
large and as dense as any of the
surrounding forest. At that time
some of the trees bore names and
dates one of the latter being 1884.
A gigantic oak tree, felled some
years afterward on the summit of
the Mound was centuries old.
Even conjecture cannot point to
the time when the mammoth
Mound was erected by by-gone
people. 1t may have been old
when Cheops was being built by a
halt million men or when Cleopa-
ira S Needle was being fashioned.
Certain it is that the Mound was
erected by prehistoric race who
were very similar to the Egyptians
ruled by some monarch who had
sufficient control to combine vast
numbers of them in a huge under
taking,
In 1888 the Mound was opened
by its owner by eXcavating a pass
age way from the north side of the
Mound toward the center. At
distance of 100 feet from the CEN
ter two skeletons were unearthed
i'll vault crudely constructed with
unhewn timber and loose stones
common in that neighborhood.
One of the skeletons was surround
ed by $50 ivory beads and an ivory
ornament about six inches in
length.
A shaft was sunk from the sum-
NIT of the mound to meet the
drift and at point of "a feet above
the vault first discovered was an
other containing skeleton which
had been ornamented with copper
rings, plates of mica and bone
heads. History does not record
whose silent tomb this was, and,
it remains for another Champolion
to exercise his ingenuity in ascer-
tanning the period of erecting and
the uses of these monuments.
Probably the most interesting
curio taken from the Mound in
1888 was stone engraved in un-
known characters resembling those
used by this Scandinavian priests
before the introduction of the