Mound Bottom

Mound Bottom was a town on a horseshoe bend of the Harpeth River, occupied from about 1000 to 1300 AD during the Mississippian period. Its principal flat-topped mound stood at least thirty-six feet high and about 246 feet on a side, set among up to thirteen smaller mounds around a seven-acre plaza. Some mounds carried ceremonial buildings or elite residences, and others were burial mounds. The state owns the site and allows entry only with park rangers or the state archaeology division. A second mound group, the Pack Site, is on private land.

What the plaque says

Mound Bottom To the south is one of the mounds erected by the Mound Builders, prehistoric inhabitants of this region, ante-dating the Indians. Numerous other such mounds are found to the northwest, in a bend of the Harpeth River. Mound Bottom Across the river are the remains of an 800-year old town built by ancient Native American Indians. Almost surrounded by the river, it was also guarded by a high palisade wall. A large temple mound and several smaller mounds surrounded an open plaza. Archaeologists believe this town had important political and ceremonial functions. It is currently owned by the State of Tennessee.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 17 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 18 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 18 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 18 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Montgomery Bell — 0.9 mi
• Patterson Forge — 0.9 mi
• Connection To Johnsonville — 2.7 mi
• Smith Farmhouse — 9.6 mi