Prehistoric people called central Ohio home

Prehistoric humans left behind plenty of evidence that they coveted this land that we now call Franklin County.

It was a major stomping ground for people thousands of years ago, and perhaps that was because two large rivers converged here. Those waterways were major routes of transportation, and their banks were ideal places for campsites.

Before settlers destroyed it, there was once a 40-foot-tall mound right in Downtown Columbus, and the road that passes through where it stood is called Mound Street to this day.

I am always amazed by the tall Adena mound that still stands along McKinley Avenue and how much effort it took to make it. I wonder, what was its purpose?

Bradley Lepper, the curator of archaeology at the Ohio History Connection, told me that a 1914 survey found that there were 132 mounds and 28 earthen enclosures in Franklin County. “Now, with all the development, there are probably 10 surviving,” he said.

Today I want to concentrate on just one place of prehistoric habitation that once existed in Franklin county, but has been destroyed by development. The “Stringtown Site” in Grove City was discovered by amateurs, a married couple, who spent their spare time investigating central Ohio’s past.

Lepper said the Stringtown Site was inhabited over thousands of years by some of the area’s earliest prehistoric people and used well into the Woodland Period, which was just before historic times. He said a uniquely shaped projectile point found there, with a leaf-shaped blade and a wide base, is still called a “stringtown point” by archaeologists.

Michael Bergman, of Madison County, interviewed the couple who discovered the Stringtown Site for a story in the Grove City Record many years ago. He said Ernest and Dorothy Good found the amazing place in 1952. They are now deceased.

Ernest was first smitten by an intense interest in archaeology, Bergman said, when he found a projectile point in his father’s chicken yard way back in 1927 — the first of thousands that he and his wife would find over the next 60 years.

Bergman told me the Goods lived on Stringtown Road, which then ran through very rural country. Now it is completely developed commercially.

Over the years the Goods had learned that a good place to look for artifacts was along stream beds that fed into the Scioto River. They found the Stringtown Site along one such stream that crossed Route 104 and paralleled Stringtown Road, he said.

At that 40-acre site they found many, many artifacts, including projectile points, stone axes and slate ornaments. They knew that they had stumbled onto something special.

They called Raymond Baby, curator of archeology back then for the Ohio Historical Society, and he recognized the importance of the discovery. They had plenty of time to excavate the large encampment before development would eventually wipe it off the face of the earth.

I remember how exciting it was when I found my first projectile point while walking across a freshly plowed field.

As I bent down to pick it up, I thought how I would be the first person to touch it in thousands of years.

Imagine the excitement of finding a place where lots of ancient people resided for thousands of years.

You know, I often think about how long this land we call Franklin County has supported human life. She has done a fine job taking care of us.