Milestones
| 1200-1400[1] | Great prehistoric city grows and thrives on banks of Warrior River, West-Central Alabama. |
| 1500[1] | City deserted. |
| 1897 | Town of Carthage, white settlement at site of deserted city, renamed Moundville because of numerous Indian mounds within its limits. |
| 1905-1906 | First archaeological excavations made at Moundville by Clarence B. Moore of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. |
| 1923 | Moundville Historical Society organized to arouse interest in preservation of mounds. Mrs. Jeff Powers, Jr., President. |
| 1929 | Alabama Museum of Natural History begins archaeological investigations at Moundville after purchasing 175 acres which include most of the 40 mounds in that area. |
| 1933 | Mound State Park established with the aid of the Federal Emergency Conservation Work Agency. |
| 1935 | Temporary museum building constructed at Mound State Park. |
| 1938-39 | Alabama Museum purchases additional land, enlarging Mound State Park to 301 acres which includes all the mounds in the area. |
| 1938 | Mound State Park renamed Mound State Monument. Civilian Conservation Corps, directed by National Park Service and the Alabama Museum of Natural History, begins large-scale development of area. |
| 1939 | May 10, New Archaeological Museum dedicated. |
| 1947 | September 24, Dedication of Laboratory Unit of Erskine Ramsay Archaeological Research Center. |
| 1949 | Completion of Picnic Building: Memorial to Nelson Jones. |
[1]Approximate dates.
MOUND STATE MONUMENT
OPEN ALL YEAR
A blisful lyf, a paisible and a swete, Ledden the peples in the former age —Chaucer, Former Age, line 2
The Black Warrior River winds slowly among the rolling southern foothills. On the banks of this river many centuries ago there flourished a great Indian metropolis. Here dwelt a pleasant and contented people whose story is not of warring braves but of peaceful artisans. Theirs were days not of strife and treachery, but of quiet toil and worship. These people, given to pottery-making and the building of fine temples, have vanished long ago. The eloquence of their handiwork endures. Their pottery, lodged in the muddy earth, emerges as fresh proof that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Their temples, decayed these many years, are yet in evidence, for the pyramidal substructures of these temples—earth mounds of imposing size and number—remain.
The mounds and the story of the people who built them, a story recorded in clay and stone and native metal, are preserved today at Mound State Monument.