Visiting Ohio's Nettle Lake Mound Group
If you’re an archaeology fan or history buff, and you happen to be driving through rural northwestern Ohio, consider a stop at the Nettle Lake Mound Group.
Getting there and open hours
If you’re traveling through northwestern Ohio to visit this mound group, don’t expect a visitors center, museumm, restrooms or anything of the like. There is a large sign along the road to mark the entrance:
Hopewell Indian Mounds
National Register of Historic Places
Property of Williams County Historical Society
Hours: May thru mid November 8 am to dusk
Sign donated by Broken Arrow M.C. 2004
While the sign said the mounds are only open from May to November, we visited in early April and found that the gate was unlocked and open.
Details on the mounds
An Ohio historical marker at the site provides a few details on the mounds:
The Nettle Lake Mound group consists of 4 low mounds overlooking a stream that runs into Nettle Lake. The mounds vary in height from 1 to 3 feet and in diameter from 18 to 30 feet. The mounds are composed primarily of reddish-brown sand (secondary mound) covering a layer of darker sand and loam (primary mound).
While the marker indicates that four mounds are present, I was only able to locate three while visiting the site. The fourth mound may be hidden in the nearby forest that surrounds the clearing at the site.
The sign continues:
These mounds have been partially excavated in the past by pot hunters in search of relics. Although the records of these excavations are vague and incomplete, pottery fragments, burials, and flint artifacts found in the mounds indicate that they were constructed by the Hopewell Indians.
The sign refers to the pot hunters conducting “excavations”, but what it truly records is another sad instance in the widespread looting of Ohio’s archaeological heritage during the 19th and 20th centuries.