Toolesboro Mounds State Preserve

Toolesboro Mounds State Preserve is a 3-acre preserve featuring a cluster of ancient Indian mounds. It is located just north of the town of Toolesboro in Louisa County.

About the Land

These ancient Indian mounds overlook the Mississippi River valley near the mouth of the Iowa River in the Southern Iowa Drift Plain landform region. The preserve includes a total of seven conical mounds (that average about six to eight feet tall and forty to eighty feet in diameter), the Visitors Center and Museum, and a small reconstructed prairie. 

History

Archaeological studies of the mounds were conducted as early as the 1840s, and again in the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1930s, the Iowa Archaeological Survey and the State Historical Society urged the state to protect the mounds. In 1963, the Mosier family deeded the two southernmost mounds to the State Historical Society. The mound group was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966. The site is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

In 1971, the State Historical Society opened the Toolesboro Visitors Center. Acquisition of the northern portion, which contained five more mounds, was completed in 1976. The site was dedicated as an archaeological state preserve in 1981. 

Directions

1. From Muscatine, drive south on Highway 61 to Wapello. 
2. In Wapello, turn east (right) onto Highway 99 and go 8 miles to Toolesboro. 
3. On the west side of town, turn north (left) onto Toolesboro Road and go onehalf block to the preserve entrance (sign: Toolesboro Indian Mounds—State Historical Society of Iowa).

The Hopewell People

The mounds comprise one of Iowa’s principal “Hopewell” cultural sites. The Hopewell culture was a prehistoric mound-building group that established villages near rivers and streams during the Middle Woodland period, about 200 b.c. to a.d. 400. They are known for their mound-building activity and art, especially stone effigy pipes depicting frogs, rabbits, birds, and other animals. 

The Hopewell people traded extensively, with items coming from as far away as the:

• Appalachian Mountains
• The Atlantic coast
• Lake Superior
• The Gulf of Mexico
• The Rocky Mountains 

They also cultivated crops, hunted, fished, and gathered food from wild plants. The mounds were constructed for ceremonial rituals as well as burials. 

Burial Mounds

Similar mounds are found from the Missouri River to New York, and south to Florida. Human remains were placed in log tombs, often accompanied by: 

• Pottery
• Effigy pipes
• Copper axes
• Mica ornaments
• Pearl beads
• Bone and stone tools and weapons

The tomb was then covered with earth and the log structure was burned around the remains. A larger mound of earth was then piled over the whole area. 

Visitors Center

The Visitors Center contains displays and photographs of the Hopewell culture and is open each summer; the site itself is open year-round. 

Burial mounds are protected by law.

Other archaeological sites containing Indian mounds areas in the state include Catfish Creek, Fish Farm Mounds, Little Maquoketa Mounds, Malchow Mounds, Slinde Mounds, and Turkey River Mounds State Preserves and Effigy Mounds National Monument.