Hopewell is a name from a farm. When archaeologists first dug into the earthworks of Ohio in the nineteenth century, they found some of the finest examples on land owned by a man called Mordecai Hopewell, and the name stuck for a whole culture that flourished here between about 100 BCE and 400 CE. The people themselves had no such name, and they left no writing, so what we know comes from the soil: giant geometric enclosures, burial mounds and an astonishing range of objects.
What makes the Hopewell remarkable is the reach of their trade. Graves hold copper from the shores of Lake Superior, mica from the southern Appalachians, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, sometimes as far away as what is now Yellowstone. Craftspeople turned these into ornaments and ritual tools: a mica hand, a copper bird, a pipe carved in the shape of a beaver. Ceremonial gatherings seem to have drawn people from great distances, and the earthworks were the stages for them, more like pilgrimage centres than villages.
The collection of Ohio sites, which includes the Newark Earthworks and several around Chillicothe, was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 2023. The Newark group was once the biggest of all, covering several square kilometres, and only parts of it survive under streets and golf fairways. At Mound City, about eighty kilometres to the south, a cluster of low burial mounds sits in a grassy enclosure beside the Scioto River and is run by the national park service.
Riding here means the quiet roads of central Ohio, with farm fields, small woodlots, and long views over gently rolling country. Surfaces are generally good and traffic is light outside Columbus and Newark. Fuel is available in Heath and Newark, just a few kilometres away. In summer, the humidity and mosquitoes can be intense, and thunderstorms roll across the plains in the afternoon. Autumn is the most pleasant season, with mild days and golden light on the grass.