By Brad Lepper, Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program

On January 1st, 2025, a new era dawns for Newark’s Octagon Earthworks, one of the brightest jewels in the crown of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage site. This 2,000-year-old Indigenous wonder of the world has been shrouded by a golf course for more than a century. But that all changes -- starting now.

You may have never been to Newark’s Octagon Earthworks before. And if you haven’t, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s actually two gigantic earthen enclosures, the Observatory Circle, named for the Observatory Mound, a large mound that Indigenous people built across a former gateway, and which provided an observation platform for viewing the earthworks; and the Octagon, an eight-sided enclosure with eight openings each partially blocked by flat-topped, loaf-shaped mounds. These two enormous geometric figures are linked by a parallel-walled passageway, which served as a processional way from one sacred space to the other.

These earthworks were built sometime between 1 and 400 C.E. by the ancient Indigenous Hopewell culture as part of the Newark Earthworks, the largest connected series of geometric earthworks ever built. The Great Circle Earthworks and the Octagon Earthworks are the principal surviving remnants of the Newark Earthworks – and it was only through the extraordinary efforts of the citizens of Newark and Licking County that these magnificent monuments came to be preserved.

The Great Circle was saved when, in 1853, it became one of the main attractions of the Licking County Fairgrounds. The Octagon Earthworks was saved in 1892 when the citizens of Newark and Licking County voted to raise their taxes which enabled them to purchase the property. They then offered it to the State of Ohio to serve as the summer encampment grounds for the State Militia. The State accepted the offer, and the earthworks became Camp McKinley.

When the State Milita eventually moved to a new site better suited to their needs, the State turned the property over to the Newark Board of Trade, who then made the decision to lease the site to Moundbuilders County Club. The Country Club opened their golf course in 1911.

When the Newark Board of Trade went out of business around 1917, the court transferred ownership of the property back to the City of Newark and Licking County. In 1931, the Great Circle and the Octagon Earthworks were deeded to the Ohio History Connection, although Moundbuilders Country Club continued to lease the Octagon.

The Great Circle and the Octagon Earthworks became a National Historic Landmark in 1964. That is the highest level of recognition the United States confers on historic sites. In 1972, however, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, created the World Heritage List, to recognize cultural and natural sites of “outstanding universal value.”

In 2006, the U.S. Department of the Interior requested suggestions for sites that might be worthy of being nominated to the World Heritage List. Working together, the Ohio History Connection and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park responded with a nomination that included the Octagon Earthworks, the Great Circle, and the Fort Ancient Earthworks, along with five earthworks that are part of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was added to the United States’ so-called Tentative List in 2008; and ten years later, the Department of the Interior gave us the nod to begin preparing our nomination for submission to UNESCO. We submitted our nomination in 2022 and were inscribed on the World Heritage List the following year.

During the years of working on the nomination, it became clear to everyone that the nomination would not succeed as long as there was a golf course on the Octagon. Public access was much too limited; and the presence of an private golf course on a World Heritage site would set a bad precedent.

After years of fruitless negotiations with the Country Club, the Director of the Ohio History Connection made the decision to use the authority granted to us by the Ohio Revised Code to end the lease and take over full management of the site. This resulted in years of legal proceedings, but eventually the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Ohio History Connection. Beginning on January 1st, the public will have complete access to the Octagon Earthworks from dawn to dusk, 365 days a year.

Although it will be years before we complete the process of transforming the site from a golf course to a visitor experience comparable to what you now enjoy at the Great Circle and Fort Ancient Earthworks, we hope you will take advantage of this new opportunity to immerse yourself as never before in the grandeur of the Octagon Earthworks!

What’s so special about the Octagon Earthworks?

First of all, the scale of this ancient Indigenous architecture is staggering. For example, the Octagon, by itself, is large enough to hold four Roman Colosseums.

Second, in spite of the immense size of the earthworks, the geometry of the Octagon Earthworks is incredibly precise, especially when you consider that the design was laid out with little more than poles and ropes. The Observatory Circle is a virtually perfect circle with a diameter of 1,054 feet, a measurement that shows up over and over again in other Hopewell earthworks.

Third, the walls and gateways of the Octagon Earthworks are aligned to the four points on the eastern horizon and the corresponding four points on the western horizon that define the 18.6-year-long cycle of moonrises and moonsets. Most dramatically, the main axis of the earthworks, a line that stretches from the Observatory Mound through the parallel-walled processional way that leads into the Octagon, and on through the northeastern gateway points to where the Moon rises at its northernmost point on the eastern horizon, a cosmic convergence that happens once a generation.

Fourth, the Octagon Earthworks are the birthplace of scientific archaeology in Ohio. On the 4th of July in 1836, the Calliopean Society of the Granville Literary and Theological Institution, which we now know as Denison University, came to the Octagon not to dig for buried treasure, but to test a scientific hypothesis. In 1820, Caleb Atwater, the first archaeologist to publish a map of the Newark Earthworks, suggested that the Observatory Mound was the remnant of an entrance with an arch, and that, at some point in the past, the arch had collapsed blocking the entrance. The members of the Calliopean Society excavated a trench through Observatory Mound and determined that it was not a collapsed arch but was instead a wall of stone and earth built deliberately to block off a former entrance into the Observatory Circle.

Finally, the Octagon Earthworks can be appreciated as a work of art. The American abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman visited Newark and other Hopewell earthworks in 1949. In an essay he never published he wrote that walking inside the Newark Earthworks, “one is confounded by a multiplicity of sensations: that here are the greatest works of art on the American continent…; that here in the seductive Ohio Valley are perhaps the greatest art monuments in the world."

We hope you will come to the Octagon Earthworks, whether you’ve been there before or not. The trappings of a golf course are still there, for now, but the spirit of this ancient Indigenous sacred site has changed forever. Whatever your passion, whether it be American Indian history, archaeology, architecture, geometry, astronomy, or art, you will find something here to delight and inspire you.