The Man Mound: A Giant in the Earth
Near Baraboo, Wisconsin
A few miles east of Baraboo lies one of the rarest ancient monuments in the Americas. It is called the Man Mound, and it is the only surviving effigy mound in the shape of a human being anywhere in North America. Built by Late Woodland people sometime between roughly the years seven hundred fifty and twelve hundred, it depicts a striding figure crowned with horns or a horned headdress, perhaps a spirit being drawn from the mound builders' beliefs.
When it was first carefully surveyed in eighteen fifty-nine by a settler named William Canfield, the figure stretched an astonishing two hundred fourteen feet from head to foot. Sadly, when a country road was later laid out across the site, it sliced off the mound's lower legs, which is why the giant seems to be walking straight out of the pavement today. Concerned citizens purchased and preserved the mound as a county park in nineteen oh eight, in one of the earliest acts of archaeological preservation in the United States.
It was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places and, in twenty sixteen, honored as a National Historic Landmark. Stand at its feet and you face a message shaped into the earth more than a thousand years ago.
