Newark Earthworks

At a glance

Overview

The Newark Earthworks are the surviving pieces of a complex of geometric earthen walls, mounds and parallel-walled roads that once covered about four square miles of level ground between Raccoon Creek and the South Fork of the Licking River. People of the Hopewell culture built it during the Middle Woodland period; radiocarbon dates place construction between about 160 BC and AD 310. Three parts survive: the 1,200-foot Great Circle in Heath, the 50-acre Octagon joined to the 20-acre Observatory Circle in Newark, and a fragment of a square called the Wright Earthworks. The rest was erased by the growth of Newark after 1802, the Ohio Canal, railroads and plowing, while the survivors served as a county fairground, an amusement park, a militia camp and, from 1910 to 2024, a golf course. Ohio named the complex its official prehistoric monument in 2006, UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in September 2023 as part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, and the Octagon opened to full public access on January 1, 2025, after a court fight over the country club's lease.

The name

The complex takes its name from the city of Newark, founded beside it in 1802. The Great Circle was long known locally as the 'Old Fort' and as the 'Fairgrounds Circle,' and later as Mound Builders State Memorial. The low, lobed mound at its center is called Eagle Mound, likely because its outline resembles an eagle with its wings spread. (source)

Native American history

The earthworks were built by people of the Hopewell culture, a name archaeologists use for many different American Indian groups who shared styles of earthwork building, pottery and tools; it does not describe any single tribe or nation. The Ohio History Connection dates construction to the Middle Woodland period, about 100 BC to AD 400, and a series of radiocarbon dates narrows it to about 160 BC to AD 310. The builders chose ground about ten miles from Flint Ridge, whose colorful chert they worked on the site, and the Octagon is aligned with the northernmost rising of the Moon in its 18.6-year cycle. The land was used long before the Hopewell: an Archaic-period grooved stone ax, 3,000 to 9,000 years old, was found near Raccoon Creek below the Octagon. No named historic-era village is recorded at the earthworks themselves. The Shawnee are among the later Indigenous peoples of Ohio who, in the words of Eastern Shawnee Chief Glenna Wallace, 'protected them and respected them' before their forced removal west in the 1830s. The land lies south of the 1795 Greenville Treaty line, in the area the treaty opened to U.S. settlement.

• Great Circle and Eagle Mound: earthwork, Heath, Licking County, Middle Woodland (Hopewell), c. 160 BC to AD 310
• Octagon, Observatory Circle and Observatory Mound: earthwork, Newark, above the Raccoon Creek floodplain, Middle Woodland (Hopewell), 100 BC to AD 400
• Wright Earthworks (remnant of a 20-acre square): earthwork, James Street, Newark, Middle Woodland (Hopewell)
• Parallel-walled roads running from the Octagon: trail, south of the Octagon, traced nearly two miles in the 1840s, Middle Woodland (Hopewell)
• Archaic grooved stone ax find: other, banks of Raccoon Creek below the Octagon, Archaic, 9,000 to 3,000 years ago
• Greenville Treaty line (land to the south ceded): treaty, line from Fort Laurens west-southwest to Fort Loramie, north of Licking County, 1795

Stories

An Egyptian temple in the forest

When Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis described the Great Circle in 1848, it was still covered with 'the gigantic trees of a primitive forest.' Its walls stood about 12 feet high above an inner ditch 7 feet deep, and at the eastern gateway the wall rose to 16 feet over a 13-foot ditch, about 30 feet from ditch bottom to crest. Entering it, they wrote, a visitor felt the awe he might feel 'in passing the portals of an Egyptian temple.' At the center they measured a bird-shaped group of four joined mounds, 200 feet from wingtip to wingtip, with its head pointing to the entrance. Their map, based on Charles Whittlesey's 1836 survey, came with a warning: the connecting walls and small circles were being plowed away and cut by the Ohio Canal, and residents would soon need the map to know what had stood under their own gardens. (source)

Horse races inside the Old Fort

In 1853 the Licking County Agricultural Society bought the Great Circle, and for the next 80 years it was the county fairground, locally called the 'Old Fort.' A lithograph from the late 1800s shows horses racing around the inside of the ancient wall while crowds cheered. W. H. Holmes of the Bureau of American Ethnology warned that if the fair stayed, a few generations would see the earthwork's practical demolition. Instead the uses multiplied: from 1896 to 1924 R. C. Lingafelter ran Idlewilde Park there, with a switchback railroad, a Ferris wheel, a dance pavilion and shooting galleries, its ornate gate standing about where the site museum is today. Idlewilde faded as nearby Buckeye Lake's park grew, and the last county fair inside the circle was held in 1933, the year the state historical society took ownership. (source)

The Moon over the Octagon

In the 1980s two Earlham College professors, the physicist and astronomer Ray Hively and the philosopher Robert Horn, went looking for solar alignments at the Octagon and found none. They then tested the Moon, whose rising points swing through a full cycle every 18.6 years. The Octagon fit: from the Observatory Mound, at the northernmost point of that cycle, the Moon rises over the center of the Octagon. Archaeologist Brad Lepper has pointed out a hidden geometry as well: the Great Circle's circumference equals the perimeter of the square it was joined to, and a square drawn inside the Octagon has sides of 1,054 feet, the same as the diameter of the Observatory Circle. The builders laid out these shapes without any high vantage point from which to see them whole. (source)

A golf course on sacred ground

After the Ohio militia left the Octagon in 1908, the Newark Board of Trade leased the ground to the Moundbuilders Country Club in 1910, and golfers began playing across the ancient walls in 1911. When the state historical society was deeded the site in 1933, in the middle of the Depression, it kept the lease. The walls survived, but the public did not have full access to them, and archaeologists have found mostly bottle glass, skeet targets and golf tees there. The Ohio History Connection opened talks in 2013, sued for the lease by eminent domain in 2018 and won at every level through the Supreme Court of Ohio on December 7, 2022. A jury trial on the lease's value was postponed three times before the two sides settled in 2024 for an undisclosed sum, and on January 1, 2025, the Octagon opened to everyone. (source)

What lay under Eagle Mound

The low, lobed mound at the center of the Great Circle is called 'Eagle Mound,' likely because its outline looks like an eagle with its wings spread. In 1928 Emerson Greenman excavated it. He found no burials. Instead, in true Hopewell style, the mound had been heaped over the remains of a large rectangular building made of many posts, with a screening fence laid out in a T shape. The eagle outline was most likely a result of how those remains were covered with earth, though the mound's final shape may also have been deliberately refined. A similar lobed design is engraved on a small stone tablet William C. Mills recovered from the Tremper Mound in 1915. (source)

Timeline

• c. 160 BC to AD 310: People of the Hopewell culture build the Newark complex over nearly five centuries, according to a series of radiocarbon dates. (source)
• 1802: The town of Newark is founded next to the earthworks, beginning two centuries of growth that erases most of the complex. (source)
• 1820: The first published map of the Newark works appears in Caleb Atwater's description of Ohio antiquities, issued by the American Antiquarian Society. (source)
• 1836: Charles Whittlesey, topographical engineer of the State of Ohio, makes the careful survey of the Newark works later used by Squier and Davis. (source)
• 1836: The Calliopean Society of the Granville Literary and Theological Institution digs into the Observatory Mound at the Octagon. (source)
• 1848: Squier and Davis publish Plate XXV, 'The Newark Works,' in Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, the Smithsonian's first publication, warning that canal building and the new village of Lockport had nearly destroyed part of the group. (source)
• 1853: The Licking County Agricultural Society buys the Great Circle, which becomes the county fairground and occasionally hosts the Ohio State Fair. (source)
• 1860: Licking County surveyor David Wyrick draws a detailed map of the Newark works. (source)
• 1888: Cyrus Thomas and James D. Middleton of the Bureau of American Ethnology survey the works; the survey is published in 1894. (source)
• 1893: The Ohio State Militia (later the Ohio National Guard) makes the Octagon its State Encampment Grounds, which it remains until 1908 (Wikipedia gives the start as 1892). (source)
• 1896: R. C. Lingafelter opens Idlewilde Park, an amusement park with a switchback railroad and a Ferris wheel, at the Great Circle; it runs until 1924. (source)
• 1910: The Newark Board of Trade, owner of the Octagon, leases it to the Moundbuilders Country Club, which opens a golf course there in 1911. (source)
• 1928: Emerson Greenman excavates Eagle Mound at the center of the Great Circle and finds no burials but the remains of a large rectangular post building. (source)
• 1933: The Great Circle and the Octagon are deeded to the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, which keeps the country club's lease on the Octagon. (source)
• 1933: The last Licking County Fair is held inside the Great Circle. (source)
• 1934: Frances Rees Wright gives the surviving piece of the square enclosure, now the Wright Earthworks, to the Ohio Historical Society. (source)
• 1964: The Newark Earthworks are designated a National Historic Landmark on July 19, 1964, and listed on the National Register on October 10, 1966. (source)
• 1982: Researchers from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, conclude the Octagon and Observatory Circle are aligned to the northernmost moonrise of the 18.6-year lunar cycle. (source)
• 1997: The Ohio Historical Society signs a lease with Moundbuilders Country Club running to 2078. (source)
• 2006: Senate Bill 271, effective September 7, 2006, designates the Newark Earthworks the official prehistoric monument of Ohio. (source)
• 2008: The U.S. Department of the Interior names the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, including Newark, among 14 sites for possible World Heritage nomination. (source)
• 2013: The Ohio History Connection begins negotiating with the country club for full public access to the Octagon. (source)
• 2018: The Ohio History Connection goes to court to take the Octagon lease by eminent domain. (source)
• 2019: In May, Licking County Common Pleas Judge David Branstool rules the society may acquire the lease for a public use, a ruling the Fifth District Court of Appeals upholds. (source)
• 2022: On December 7, the Supreme Court of Ohio upholds the lower courts, allowing the Ohio History Connection to acquire the lease. (source)
• 2023: UNESCO inscribes the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, including the Great Circle and Octagon, on the World Heritage List under criteria (i) and (iii). (source)
• 2024: The Ohio History Connection and Moundbuilders Country Club settle for a confidential sum, averting a jury trial on the lease's value. (source)
• 2025: On January 1, the Octagon opens to full public access for the first time in more than a century. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: Newark Earthworks
• ohiohistory.org: a view within the circle
• ohiohistory.org: objects from the octagon
• ohiohistory.org: octagonsettlement
• ohiohistory.org: ohio supreme court upholds lower court decisions for ohio history connection to acquire octag
• ohiohistory.org: newark earthworks
• whc.unesco.org
• bbc.com: 20221204 the us 2000 year old mystery mounds
• codes.ohio.gov: section 5.073
• archive.org: ancientmonuments00squi djvu.txt
• en.wikipedia.org: Treaty of Greenville
• commons.wikimedia.org: File:Ohio Newark Earth Works drawn 1860.jpg