Hopewell Culture National Historic Park

Open Monday – Sunday 8:30am to 5:00pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. Free admission.
At the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, you can view history first-hand by visiting the mounds dating back to 200 B.C. Visible remnants of Hopewell culture are concentrated in the Scioto River valley near the present-day city of Chillicothe, Ohio. These Earthen mounds and embankments forming huge geometric enclosures grace the area landscape. These monumental structures were built by Native American hands almost 2,000 years ago. Hopewellian people gathered at these earthworks for feasts, funerals and rites of passage.

The most striking Hopewell sites contain earthworks in the form of circles, squares, and other geometric shapes. Many of these sites were built to a monumental scale, with earthen walls up to 12 feet high outlining geometric figures more than 1,000 feet across. Conical and loaf-shaped earthen mounds up to 30 feet high are often found in association with the geometric earthworks. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park preserves five earthwork complexes: High Bank Works, Hopeton Earthworks, Hopewell Mound Group, Mound City Group, and Seip Earthworks.

The park was originally established on March 2nd, 1923 as “Mound City Group National Monument” and was the first federally created National Park Service site in Ohio. The park was eventually re-named Hopewell Culture National Historical Park on May 27th, 1992 after congressional legislation was approved in the House and the Senate.

Currently, the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park along with partners from the Ohio Historical Society are organizing and strategizing to ensure that the remaining monumental works in our region gain recognition by becoming classified as a World Heritage Site. For more information on World Heritage accreditation, click here.