In September 2023, a collection of eight unique Native American sites in various locations in the State of Ohio were inscribed as World Heritage Sites. These sites include Fort Ancient in Oregonia, OH, two sites at the Newark Earthworks in Newark, OH, and five sites that are part of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, OH. Collectively, these five sites are known as the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks. None of the above sites are in Scioto County, but there are Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks and a rich Native American narrative that Portsmouth and Scioto County preserves.
Scioto County has been a prime location for human settlement since the end of the last Ice Age. The Scioto and Ohio River Conflux provide a bounty of wild game, as well as edible plants, nuts, and berries. These resources attracted Paleo-Indian Culture hunter/gatherers for thousands of years. The prehistoric Indigenous presence in Scioto County remains today in the form of monumental landscape architecture and artifacts left behind hundreds and even thousands of years in the past. Scioto County is home to what was once the largest prehistoric earthen mound complex in the entire world: The Portsmouth Earthworks! The majority of the complex is thought to have been created by the Hopewell Culture around 2,000 years ago. The Portsmouth Earthworks were the largest of all Hopewell Culture constructions.
The footprint of the Portsmouth Earthworks covered over 25 square miles or over 50,000 acres! These mounds occupied the cities and hilltop ridges of Portsmouth, West Portsmouth, Lucasville, Sciotoville, and Wheelersburg in Ohio, as well as South Portsmouth and South Shore in Kentucky. The center of the complex was the Twin Horseshoe Mounds Enclosure at Mound Park in Portsmouth. Four sets of Parallel Earthen Embankments formed paths of the procession leading in the intermediate directions to the satellite elements of the complex. The purpose of this massive construction is thought to have been ceremonial.
Though there are several burial mounds included in the Portsmouth Earthworks, many of the mounds were used for different purposes. For example, no burials have ever been discovered at Mound Park. There were never any burials reported to be associated with any of the four sets of Parallel Embankments. While some of the mounds served a mortuary purpose, it is thought that additional ceremonies were performed at some Portsmouth Earthworks sites. Astronomical, directional, and seasonal alignments documented in the Portsmouth Earthworks suggest that some components may have functioned as a type of calendar.
A small number of Portsmouth Earthworks sites still exist today. Mound Park in Portsmouth features the East Twin Horseshoe Mound, the Mound Park Conical Mound, and the so-called Natural Elevation, which is also an earthwork. Mound Park is open to the public with a playground, a paved pathway, and newly constructed pickleball courts built near the earthworks. Another Hopewell Earthwork, Tremper Mound, is in West Portsmouth and is still present in the modern landscape. This mound is famous for the discovery of around 60 Hopewell Culture effigy pipes carved in the images of local wildlife. Tremper Mound is now part of a nature preserve under the stewardship of the Arc of Appalachia, an Ohio archaeological and ecological conservancy. The Arc of Appalachia has plans to open the Tremper Mound Nature Preserve to the public in September 2024.
The presence of Indigenous Cultures persisted in the area through the time when European explorers first contacted the people of the New World. In the 18th century, the Shawnee Nation operated a popular trading post at Lower Shawnee Town in both Ohio and Kentucky. The Shawnee are thought to have arrived in the area in the 1730s. Lower Shawnee Town was located in West Portsmouth, Ohio, in and around what is now Earl Thomas Conley Riverside Park. Repeated flooding drove the village to the opposite bank of the Ohio River in Kentucky in 1756. By the time the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, all the Shawnee were driven out of Lower Shawnee Town.
By the early 1800s, the Shawnee were removed from Ohio. The last Native American tribe living in Ohio, the Wyandot, signed a treaty declaring their move to Oklahoma in 1842. The Shawnee Nation is now three federally recognized tribes living on reservations in Oklahoma: The Absentee-Shawnee Tribe, The Eastern Shawnee Tribe, and The Shawnee Tribe.
Visitors to Portsmouth-Scioto County can learn and explore these indigenous cultures further. The Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center houses a collection of over 10,000 prehistoric Native American artifacts, many discovered in and around the Portsmouth Earthworks. This collection is displayed in the museum’s “Art of The Ancients” permanent exhibition.
Andrew Feight, Ph.D., Professor of History and Director of The Center of Public History at Shawnee State University, has created a tour of the Portsmouth Earthworks sites remaining in Ohio called the part of the Scioto Historical Portsmouth Earthworks Complex Tour. This tour is hosted on the Scioto Historical website and smartphone app and includes a virtual rendering of the Portsmouth Earthworks, as they are thought to have existed around 2,000 years ago. Herb Roe, a visual artist and graduate of Portsmouth High School, created the virtual images of the Portsmouth Earthworks based on historic documentation and professional input. The scope of the Portsmouth Earthworks is so large that it is best witnessed from the air. Herb Roe’s Virtual Flyover of the Portsmouth Earthworks Complex may be viewed on the Scioto Historical app or YouTube.
Evidence from Scioto County attests to the monumental and sophisticated prehistoric civilizations that once thrived in the region. Scioto County remains a land of abundance, attracting modern-day visitors and residents for many of the same reasons prehistoric people chose to make this place their home. Visit the Portsmouth-Scioto County Visitors Bureau’s website for more information about visiting these sites and other attractions in the area.
