Cahokia Mounds

A thousand years ago Cahokia was the largest city anywhere north of Mexico, home at its height to perhaps twenty thousand people, more than London at the same date, and its people moved an extraordinary quantity of earth by hand to build it. Monks Mound, the largest earthwork anywhere north of Mexico, rises in four terraces to about thirty metres with a footprint bigger than the Great Pyramid's, and around it stand dozens more mounds, a reconstructed timber circle used to track the sun that researchers nicknamed Woodhenge, and the outline of a great plaza. The city was abandoned before Europeans arrived and nobody is certain why. Climbing Monks Mound and looking out at the St Louis skyline across the floodplain puts a thousand years into one view.

History

There are traces of people here around 1200 BC, but Cahokia was settled around 600 AD and mound building began in the 9th century, at the start of the Mississippian culture; by the late 900s a large community spread over 35 to 70 hectares, and maize took hold around 900. Around 1050 the city's three precincts were laid out on a grid oriented north along the Grand Plaza, and at its height around 1100 it covered about 16 square kilometres with some 120 earthworks and between 15,000 and 20,000 people, trading as far as the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast in copper, chert, shark teeth and whelk shells. The city lasted until about 1350, and its mounds are now the largest and most complex archaeological site north of Mexico (Wikipedia, Cahokia).

The main sights

• Monks Mound - the largest earthwork north of Mexico, climbed by a stairway.
• Woodhenge - the reconstructed timber circle aligned to the solstices.
• The interpretive centre - the city's story and a reconstructed village scene.
• The mound field - dozens of surviving mounds across the site.

When to go

Spring and autumn are the most pleasant; the site is open in all seasons but summer is hot and humid on open ground with no shade. Sunrise and sunset gatherings at Woodhenge mark the solstices and equinoxes. Check the interpretive centre's days, as they have varied.

Things to know

It takes imagination: this is grassy mounds rather than stone architecture, and without the interpretive centre or a guide the scale of what stood here is easy to miss entirely. The setting is unglamorous, hemmed by highways and suburbs. The climb up Monks Mound is a steep stairway. It deserves far more visitors than it gets.

Nearby

St Louis and the Gateway Arch are fifteen minutes west across the river.

Key facts