Earthworks column series 10-24-21

Earthworks column series 10-24-21
Jeff Gill

Preservation history made in Newark
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On March 8, 1892 a special election was held in Licking County. The results of the balloting that day may be a part of not just local history, but a significant step forward in world history.

The citizens of this county voted overwhelmingly to purchase, with a property tax levy, about 135 acres on the far west side of Newark that included "the Octagon Fort" because "the people of Licking county are strongly of the opinion that these earthworks should be preserved, and that the State should own them" in the words of an Advocate reporter in 1891.

Why did they do this? True, in Ohio other monumental antiquities had already been preserved. In 1886, Frederic Ward Putnam had moved to purchase Serpent Mound for Harvard University with private donated monies. This no doubt helped to motivate a push, led by local antiquarians like Warren K. Moorehead, to have the State of Ohio buy Fort Ancient and make it the first state park in 1891.

There were also wider cultural influences that local residents would have been aware of, from preparations for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago which involved Putnam and Moorehead at ancient sites all over Ohio, surveying mounds and excavating artifacts for display in that American world's fair meant to compete with the Old World's great 1889 Paris Exposition. Chicago's vast and first Ferris wheel was the reply to France's Eiffel Tower, but scientific exhibits were also intended to support national pride and competition between the hemispheres.

So our ancient wonders were highlighted in that decade, and the value, even if only as bragging rights, of a long-distant culture which could be compared to Egypt and Rome was on the upswing. America also had John Muir out west, in California, promoting all through the 1880s the grandeur and irreplaceable wonder of Yosemite, which was named a national park in 1890 after many articles about preserving American antiquities and marvels had been written by Muir and published in magazines and newspapers read even in far off Ohio.

The United States had declared Yellowstone a national park in 1872, and Yosemite in 1890, but there was no National Park Service to operate and manage such sites until 1916. The Army was invited to send units like the Buffalo Soldiers to train and maintain federal properties, and offer tours to visitors in season, and today's park ranger uniform is largely the Buffalo Soldier uniform of the 1870s.

This is why the local leaders in Newark who wanted to preserve the Octagon Earthworks had to think creatively in 1891. They looked at bringing the state lunatic asylum to the site, or a Masonic Home, but ended up settling on inviting the Ohio National Guard (ONG) to establish a permanent encampment at the end of Camp Alley off 30th St., the edge of the city, as the management option that would serve their needs. The Ohio legislature agreed, but with the requirement that the citizens vote to purchase the land involved before they would provide for managing the site through an ONG encampment.

Newark had preserved the Great Circle in 1854 by making it the county fairgrounds (a role it fulfilled through 1933, even hosting the Ohio State Fair that first year), and the success of that site as a public park for two generations helped build support. Then, in 1892 something happened in this county that had never been done before, possibly anywhere: local citizens voted to tax themselves to obtain and preserve antiquities of a culture not their own. Not by federal act or state decree, but through local initiative the Octagon Earthworks were purchased directly with local tax dollars.

It was an act of initiative and vision for which we can, in Licking County, be justly proud of 129 years later.