In Louisa County, Highway 99 leaves the city of Wapello and heads southeast toward the confluence of the Iowa and Mississippi rivers. Just before it makes a hard right turn and continues south to Burlington, 99 passes the Toolesboro Mounds National Historic Landmark. It’s a small site, set back from the road. If you aren’t looking for it, it may be easy to miss. But about 2,000 years ago, a group of people came together here and moved the earth to bury and commemorate their honored dead.
Followers of the Hopewell tradition constructed the Toolesboro mounds. “Hopewell” refers less to a political unit or unified community and more to a group of people who shared common cultural practices; namely, the burial of high status individuals in large, conical, earthen mounds along with exotic trade goods.
The Hopewell had an expansive trade network, indicated by archaeological artifacts made from Great Lakes copper, Rocky Mountain obsidian, shells and pearls from the Gulf of Mexico, Appalachian mica, and shark teeth from the Chesapeake Bay. Since we only know the Hopewell people through archaeological excavations and no evidence of written language was preserved, we may never know how they referred to themselves.
Toolesboro Mounds is one of seven historic sites operated by the State Historical Society of Iowa (SHSI). These sites tell stories of extraordinary achievement as well as everyday life. At the sites, visitors are introduced to how Iowa has shaped the American experience and how American history has shaped Iowa.
In far northwest Iowa is another SHSI site, the Blood Run National Historic Landmark. To followers of a different cultural tradition, the Oneota, Blood Run was a place of gathering, trade, community, and sacred practices. Occupied for thousands of years, today the Blood Run site appears as rolling hills and bluffland that tumble down to the banks of the Big Sioux River.
Although visual evidence of its former occupation can be hard to see, the “sense of place” gained when visiting the site makes it apparent why Blood Run still holds deep cultural significance to the descendants of the Oneota, members of multiple sovereign tribal nations spread throughout the Midwest and Great Plains.
When we make a mental sketch of Iowa’s history, it can be easy to draw Marquette and Joliet going down one river, the Corps of Discovery going up another, and coloring in the details with Julien Dubuque, George Davenport, and other household names. But that’s just a doodle. People have lived, worked, and created communities here for more than 13,000 years. Visiting historic sites offers the opportunity to connect with that continuum of human presence and gives us the context we need to place ourselves somewhere along its arc.
Historic sites, like Toolesboro Mounds and Blood Run, provide an experience in history that traditional museums rarely offer. At a historic site, visitors are surrounded by a place where history happened. They can engage all of their senses to feel what it was like to be in another time. Historic sites provide a real, tangible connection to a sense of the authentic. More than most other places, they allow visitors to “walk in the footsteps of history.”
To tell their stories and provide that connection to the authentic, historic sites need your support. The easiest way is to do a simple internet search for nearby sites and then plan a visit. If you enjoy yourself, spread the word! Then, if you can, consider a modest financial contribution to help keep these sites available to the next generation of visitors.
As we begin Iowa History Month, learn more about Iowa’s historic sites. They’re all around us, connect us to the stories of the people that have been here for time immemorial, and are some of the wonderful and fascinating places that make this state unique.
Michael Plummer is a historic sites manager for the State Historical Society of Iowa. This essay was written on behalf of the State Historical Society of Iowa. For more information, visit history.iowa.gov.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa History Month: Historic sites are a connection to our shared past
Reporting by Michael Plummer, Special to the Register / Des Moines Register
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