The Lost Mounds At The Forks

This isn’t a ghost story. It’s in black and white, in the state’s own archaeological record. Ancient Life in Kentucky, the book Kentucky historians and archaeologists still use, lists “Mounds near the fork of Licking River,” sourced to early naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. And then, in the same breath, the note: “Not definitely located.” Translation: they were here. Someone saw them. They got written down. Then we lost them.

If you know the Licking River basin, this isn’t far-fetched. Upstream on the South Fork in Harrison County sits the LeBus Circle, a confirmed Fort Ancient earthwork. That means mound builders were in this valley, building in earth, long before Falmouth was Falmouth. The Forks, high, dry and right where two waterways meet, would have been prime ground for something important.

So what happened? We paved it. We plowed it. We built over it. The oldest detailed maps we’ve got, the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from the late 1800s to early 1900s, show every flat foot near the Forks packed with mills, depots, warehouses, and homes. Whatever was left of those mounds by then probably became fill dirt. The county’s own comprehensive plan gushes about the Forks as a “historic focal point,” but there’s not a word about what was here before the deeds and plat books.

Here’s the part they won’t tell you, lost doesn’t mean gone. It means covered. It means there’s a chance a scrap of one still exists in some yard, some empty lot, some green space no one’s ever thought to question. And if that’s true, then Falmouth isn’t just a dot on the map, it’s a missing link in a prehistoric network that stretched across this entire region.

The state record says it. Rafinesque saw it. The question now is whether we let the mounds stay buried in paperwork and asphal or whether we start looking.

Whisper One Out

Sources:

Funkhouser & Webb, Ancient Life in Kentucky (Pendleton Co. entry mounds near fork of Licking River; Rafinesque; not definitely located)

Kentucky Archaeological Survey (LeBus Circle, Fort Ancient earthwork, South Fork of Licking River)

Sanborn Map Company (Falmouth, KY Fire Insurance Maps, 1886–1909)

Pendleton County Comprehensive Plan (historic development at the confluence)