A Story About Life and Living It

The highest point in Illinois is up in the far northwest corner of the state, which would have been incredibly far out of the way for this trip, so we put that one off and contented ourselves with a few historic sites in southern Illinois, just across the river from St Louis.

First we went to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, home to the largest man-made earthen structures in the US. Unlike the burial mounds that I saw growing up in West Virginia, many of these mounds either served a ceremonial purpose or acted as raised platforms on which the more influential leaders of the tribe built their homes and meetings places. The whole area is designated a UNESCO world heritage site - one of only 21 such sites in the US and about 900 in the world.

This is the largest mound, Monk's Mound. Those steps are a lot more intimidating up close than far away:


The steps are in the same location as the original steps from thousands of years ago, but are clearly not original. This largest mound held the chieftain's home and meeting house. From here he could look out over the 6 square mile town and its population of 15,000 (in 1250 AD - about the same size as London and Paris at that time). 


Fun fact: the Cahokia mounds were built by the Mississippian culture. The Cahokia tribe came later and had nothing to do with the mounds, but lived in the same area, so for some reason the mounds are named after them. Blame the first European settlers (French trappers) for that.


The museum is full of neat artifacts:


Complete with recreations of village life:


 After so much culture we decided to swing by some rather large Americana:


 Behold! The world's largest bottle of ketchup! The factory went out of business years ago, but the bottle stills stands as sentinel in Collinsville, IL. After that it was back to the road!