Moment in Time (October 5, 2021)

The Anderson Mound, aka Pope Mound, is seen here in this 1892 photo with the Pope farmhouse in the background. Mr. Pope built the stairs up the side of the mound to a picnic area on the top. At the right is an aerial photo showing its location.

According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Adena people were a group of well-organized Native American societies that lived in parts of the U.S. from Indiana to New York and from central Ohio south to Kentucky. The Adena people were not a single tribe, but rather, a group of indigenous people that shared similarities in artifact style, architecture, and other cultural practices, including a common burial and ceremonial system that included mound building.

The people of the Adena culture were the first group of “mound builders”, a practice that was performed by several cultures. Their era was part of the Woodland Period, which lasted from about 1000 BC to 1000 AD. The active Adena culture spanned a period starting around 500 BC and lasting until about 100 AD, when the Hopewell culture became prominent. Southern Ohio is often seen to be the center of what is known as the Adena culture, primarily because of the number and size of mounds found here. At one time the Adena mound sites numbered up to 200, but only a small number of them remain today.

A 1914 archaeological overview map of Franklin county based on William Mill’s 1914 Archaeological Atlas of Ohio shows three Adena mounds in or near Grandview - a small mound (10 feet high and 65 feet in diameter) near what is now the Grandview Heights Municipal Building, a larger mound (20 feet high and 100 feet in diameter) near the intersection of Fifth Avenue and McKinley (called the Shrum Mound, named for the family that donated the land that it is on), and an even larger mound (30 feet high and 165 feet in diameter) near the intersection of Dublin Road and Grandview Avenue.

This last mound was called the Anderson Mound (it has also been known as the Pope Mound, and later the Toepfner Mound). The mound was on the property of landowner W.A. Anderson, who sold it to W.A. Pope in 1888. Mr. Pope worked diligently to preserve the mound, clearing brush and annually re-sodding it. According to a Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff newsletter from Spring of 2005 written by Trustee Tom DeMaria, data from Ancient Earthworks in Franklin County, written by James Rodgers in 1892, indicate that the mound near the Grandview Heights municipal building was also excavated and explored by Mr. Pope.

Pope died in the 1930s but his widow Clara kept the 3.5-acre property until 1946. The Grandview area was expanding and the land was no longer being farmed as she had moved out of state, so she decided to sell it. The property was purchased in 1946 by businessman Joseph Toepfner, who owned a Studebaker dealership at 941 N. High Street. He wanted to commercialize the land, but before moving forward he renamed the mound for himself. After several months, he hired a company to bulldoze the unexcavated mound so that he could erect a truck repair shop.

Local citizens raised objections, protesting on the site and contacting the press to try to stop the destruction of the mound. They also contacted the Ohio Historical Society, who had previously expressed interest in purchasing the site in the 1930s in order to build a park (they couldn’t raise the money at that time.) They agreed to join the fight to block the bulldozers. They wanted to do an archaeological excavation, preserving as many of the artifacts and remains as they could, but Toepfner continued to refuse to sell them the mound in order to allow them do a proper excavation.

The struggle went on for seven years. In 1953, faced with the financial need to do something with the property, Toepfner finally decided to let the Ohio Historical Society excavate the mound. He gave them only 90 days, which was only enough time for what was termed a "salvage excavation". Ohio Historical Society archaeologist Dr. Ray Baby had done excavations of other Adena mounds around Ohio, so he and his assistant, Bob Goslin, were put in charge of the excavation. Because of the time constraint, they decided to strip the top 18-20 feet of the mound, assuming that the burial remains were at the lower level. But they were mistaken, as they found human remains and artifacts throughout.

At this point they began meticulously digging, and found a total of 85 graves and associated funeral artifacts, including classic flint artifacts such as Adena blades, finished points of Flint Ridge flint and Coshocton flint associated with the late phases of the mound, spearheads, gorgets or medallions, clothing, and pipes, including a one-of-a-kind pipe that is now on display at the Ohio Historical Connection. In 1985, a review of the contents of the mound was published by Rae Ann Norris in the journal Archeology of Eastern North America. Radiocarbon dating of the artifacts has set the date of the establishment of the Toepfner Mound at 410 BC, and the artifacts have been associated with the early to middle Woodland Period of archaeology, representing the 85 burials over an estimated 600 year timeframe.

Excavation of the site concluded in 1954, and all evidence of the mound’s existence is gone.