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Moundsville

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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a city and the county-seat of Marshall county, West Virginia, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 12 m. S. of Wheeling. Pop. (1900) 5632; (1910) 8918. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, by an electric line to Wheeling, and by boats to Pittsburg, Cincinnati and intermediate ports. Near Moundsville, at the mouth of Grave Creek, is Grave Creek Mound, one of the largest relics of the "American moundbuilders"; it is in the form of a regular cone, and is about 320 ft. in diameter at the base and 70 ft. in height. Two sepulchral chambers were discovered in it in 1838. In the upper chamber, about half-way between the centre of the base and the apex, was a single skeleton, adorned with beads, copper bracelets and plates of mica; in the lower chamber, directly under the upper and partly in the natural earth, were two skeletons, one adorned with beads and the other without ornament. On the sides and top of the lower chamber was a framework of timbers, which seems to indicate that the mound is of comparatively recent date. The city of Moundsville was formed in 1866 by the consolidation of the town of Moundsville (laid out on the Ohio river in 1831, and incorporated in 1832), and the town of Elizabethtown (laid out, about a m. from the river, in 1798, and incorporated in 1830).