Tremper Mound

A world-significant historic site. Tremper Mound is one of the most famous of the Hopewell Culture’s earthworks. The Mound was constructed roughly 2000 years ago along the Scioto River which borders a mile of the preserve’s eastern boundary. The now solitary Mound was stood among a small cluster of companion earthworks. The mound lies just four miles north of what was once an immense Hopewell ceremonial complex developed on both banks of the Ohio River known today as the Portsmouth Works. This once grand complex of promenades, walls, and mounds on the north side of the Ohio River now lies buried beneath the city of Portsmouth, an early Ohio River town founded in 1803. Tremper Mound is one of the few standing reminders of the architectural scale and grandeur achieved by the Hopewell Culture’s engineering feats. Its preservation honors our land’s rich indigenous legacies. The 1915 excavation that explored the mound unearthed a truly magnificent and unexpected find – one of only two caches of nearly 100 animal effigy pipes ever discovered in the larger Hopewell landscape - carved in the shape of the common wildlife species with whom the Hopewell peoples shared their world. The animals selected by the carvers of the Hopewell pipes were not only powerful animals such as panthers and bears, but toads, wood ducks, turtles, and owls. All of the stone carvings honored the members of the living community in which the Hopewell peoples’ lives were embedded, illustrating the wide ecological and sacred relationships the people had with their animal relations. More information.

Natural History. Tremper Mound protects an outstanding 6.17 miles of forest corridor, including 3.56 miles of Pond Creek’s main stem and primary headwaters, and 1.30 miles of riparian corridor along the Scioto River. The riparian forest – long missing from the fertile floodplain of the lower Scioto that is today entirely occupied by farmlands – is being restored on the 200-acre lower terrace bordering the preserve’s mile-long stretch of the Scioto River – serving as a welcome sanctuary for migrating birds. The steep unglaciated sandstone/shale hillsides found at Tremper Mound are low in pH and grow classic Appalachia hardwood species, including oaks, hickories, sugar maple, beech, poplar, and black gum, some of which have reached impressive sizes. Acid Appalachian soils like these rarely grow the density of wildflowers that more basic soils can support, but they offer a wider diversity of species. These include yellow mandarin, fire pinks, showy orchis, twinleaf, twayblade orchid, ginseng, goldenseal, wild comfrey, bear-corn, wild ginger, rattlesnake plantain, white baneberry, partridge berry, large-leaf waterleaf, toadflax, dwarf larkspur, sweet William wild phlox, rue anemone, long-spurred violet, Virginia bluebells, Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-Pulpit and a large diversity of ferns. The preserve protects 68 acres of wetland habitat that support high populations of breeding wood frogs and spotted salamanders, and thousands of spring peepers that can be heard singing in April. The wet fields produce prodigious crops of fireflies of many species, including the mesmerizing slow flashes of the—Chinese Lanterns. Because of the spectacular nature of the displays, the Arc intends to include Tremper in its line-up of firefly-watching destinations each June, during our Firefly Biodiversity Weekend.

Preserve History: For nearly a decade, the Arc mused and strategized ways to preserve Tremper Mound, along with the Appalachian hills and long stretch of the Scioto River that bounded it. Because of the scale of the project, it appeared to be an improbable if not an impossible mission. Over 2/3 of the mound was part of the 618-acre Matthews Farm owned by three siblings. Although the family members were willing to sell the land to the right buyer and wanted to see the mound protected, they also did not want to break up the farm. We were unaware of any funding mechanism sufficient for a task of this size. Adding to our challenges was the fact that although the Matthews owned most of the mound, they did not own all of it. The boundaries of two private two-acre house sites both penetrated the embankment walls that encircled the mound, their boundaries marked by barbed wire pasture fences. 

The Arc finally devised a risky funding plan to purchase the 618 acres of the preserve through the Ohio EPA’s WRRSP funding program in 2020. To achieve winning scores on the application, both Pond Creek which dissected the farm, and the lower Scioto that bordered it, had to meet the EPA’s requirements for exceptional warm water designation. Unfortunately, EPA’s records designated both waterways at a lesser ranking. Nevertheless, encouraged by aquatic biologists, we privately contracted to have the waters studied, and to our delight, both waterways – for the first time in their history – qualified for the exceptional warm water designation. An application was submitted to WRRSP, as well as to the Clean Ohio grant program. Their subsequent awards helped fund the immense costs of Tremper Mound Farm’s acquisition and development. 

Seemingly miraculously, in the same year that the Matthew Farm was acquired, both of the remaining neighbors who owned portions of the mound separately approached the Arc and offered their properties for sale. By year’s end, the entire mound was united under the single ownership of the Arc of Appalachia and protected into perpetuity.

In 2023, Arc of Appalachia was given the opportunity to expand the Tremper Mound Preserve on its southern boundary with a fourth acquisition, Huckleberry Ridge. The 85-acre property is a steep-sided forested hill with stunning panoramas of the Little Smokies of Ohio. Today that expansion has been consummated, with major funding assistance provided through the Clean Ohio grant program.