Register here - as a registered user you get more features and fewer ads.
As early as 1893, when Newark voters were presented the option of conserving the Newark Earthworks built by ancient American Indians, they chose preservation. But 100 years later, many residents still didn't know what the mounds were built for, many falsely thinking they were burial sites, and few realizing their rarity.
But some now think that is changing and have even greater goals for the local earthworks, including making the World Heritage List and potential affiliation with the National Park Service.
Today, the Octagon Earthworks will be open to the public during daylight hours -- one of a handful of golf-free days at Moundbuilders Country Club, which currently occupies the Octagon Earthworks site off North 33rd Street in Newark under a lease that runs through 2078.
"Has the attention been growing? I would hope so. You bet," said Richard Shiels, director of the Newark Earthworks Center.
Many local officials credit that interest to the center itself and another group, Friends of the Mounds, that has been working towards education since 2000. Even the center itself is an example of dedication to the idea, Shiels said. OSU-Newark created it as an initiative in 2003, but it officially became a center three years ago.
"That's a big deal," Shiels said. "That represents a long-term commitment by the university to teach about these sites."
Similarly, the Greater Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau recently moved its home to the Great Circle Earthworks, which are near the Newark-Heath border next to Ohio 79, and officials said they regularly see visitors from around the world.
But moving into the future, many connected with the American Indian ceremonial sites have even greater plans.
Most immediately many have their eyes on World Heritage status.
The site has been nominated as part of three sites, including Fort Ancient State Memorial in Oregonia and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, to be put on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List. Already, the three sites have been placed on the U.S. Tentative List.
"From what I understand, we are on the short list," Fryer said.
If the site is approved, Fryer said she anticipates a huge increase in tourism. Europeans, in particular, often have a huge interest in archeology and history.
In the meantime, the bureau is working on becoming a Preserve America community, an option that would open up grant money to train additional docents or help put on educational programs, for instance.
In many ways, it took foresight by previous residents to preserve as much of the mounds as remain today. The 1893 vote by Newark residents required a hike in taxes to buy the Octagon land and give it to the state of Ohio, Shiels said.
It wasn't until the state returned the land to Newark in 1910 that the public voted to make it a golf course rather than a park, although even then ballot language stipulated the mounds would be kept open to the public at all times. When the Newark Board of Trade went bankrupt in 1933, officials also had the foresight to give the Great Circle to the Ohio Historical Society.
But most hope that in the future the access and educational opportunities at the mounds again can be increased. "Our fundamental goal, first and foremost, is to see that they are preserved," said James Strider, acting executive director of OHS. "But we also do want to provide greater access to those sites, both physically and intellectually."
In fact, as a whole, the OHS is in the process of reinventing how sites are managed, Strider said. Some of the sites that OHS traditionally has managed are being turned over to local communities. Although Strider did not advocate the country club being removed from the Octagon, others think it is an eventual necessity.
"It's not that the Newark Earthworks Center is in favor of removing the country club so much as our goal is much bigger than that," Shiels said. "Our goal is for this to become a fully public place."
He dreams of both sites becoming a state or national park.
Already, in 2008, OHS asked the National Park Service to examine the feasibility of getting involved. Because it already operates the site in Chillicothe and one option might be the possibility of the National Park Service simply expanding its operations from there.
"If they got involved it wouldn't automatically mean increased funding, although the potential is there," he said.
Shiels and Fryer said what that could mean is a larger museum and interpretive centers, expanding on the knowledge about the Hopewell culture, perhaps at both sites.
In the end, Shiels said, it is about education.
Now the culture often is included in textbooks, but Shiels wants the Newark mounds in particular to make the cut. He points to a book detailing the 70 wonders of the ancient world.
"Three of them are in the United States," he said. "One of them is in Newark."
For more of this article, see the Newark Advocate.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road