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Show ID PRESERVE MOUND WEST VIRGINIA WILL BUY GIANT PREHISTORIC MEMORIAL. Is Largest in America and May Have Been Built While Pyramids Were Erected Relics Inside Full of Mystery. Charleston, V. Va. Standing 70 feet high, 900 feet in circumference, with trees growing on it TOO years old, the mammoth mound at .Moundsville, W. Va., located on the Grave creek Hats, near the Ohio river the greatest monument of antiquity in the Ohio valley, val-ley, and a memorial to the life of a prehistoric people, will be purchased by the' state of West Virginia. At the session of the legislature just ended, following unceasing activity for 20 years, the state appropriated $1,000 with which to save the mound from the ravages of modern commercialism. This sum, with a donation of $5,000 from the McFadden heirs, owners of the property, and a similar donation from the school children of the state, is sufficient to secure the mound for the state. A quarter of a century ago G. S. McFadden purchased the mound to prevent it being sold to a German, who knew the value of the spot for a popular resort, and Intended placing a saloon on the summit. Several months ago the heirs of McFadden served notice thait they had held the mound as long as possible, and it would be sold at once. The mound is the largest in America, Amer-ica, and was discovered by Joseph Tomlinson in 1770, the first pioneer settler in that section. Standing in a broad valley of 4,000 acres, it affords af-fords a view of the surrounding country coun-try for several miles. Relative to the age of the mound little is known. Tomlinson, the discoverer, discov-erer, said that when he discovered it and first mounted its summit, then 90 feet high, the timber on the mound was as large and dense as any of the surrounding forest. At that time some of the trees bore names and dates, one of the latter being 1734. A gigantic oak tree, felled years afterward on the summit, was ascertained to be more than six centuries old. Even conjecture cannot point to the time when the mammoth mound was erected by a bygone people. It may have been when old Cheops was being built or when Cleopatra's needle was being fashioned. Certain it is that the mound was erected by a prehistoric prehis-toric race that was similar to the Egyptians. In 1838 the mound was opened by its owner by excavating a passageway passage-way from the north side toward the center. At a distance of 100 ftet from the entrance two skeletons were unearthed in a vault crudely constructed construct-ed with unhewn timbers and loose stones. One of the skeletons was surrounded sur-rounded by 650 ivory beads and an ivory ornament about six inches in' length. A shaft was sunk from the summit of the mound to meet the drift, and at a point 34 feet above the vault first discovered was another containing a skeleton which hid been ornamented with copper rings, plates of mica and bone heads. Probably the most interesting curio or antiquary taken from the mound in 1S38 was a stone engraved in unknown characters resembling those used by the Scandinavian priests before the introduction of the Roman alphabet. The characters are conceded to be of European origin, and if this be true it is evident that other Europeans Euro-peans visited America before Christopher Chris-topher Columbus. |