Millstone Bluff

This one was an unplanned visit.  We went to Dixon Springs and spent the day, then on the way home had extra time, and it was on the way and not far at all.  I had looked at it online, and was interested, so we kind of killed two birds with one stone.

This is a really neat place, but in the fall it is really hard to see what is there.  We could barely make out part of what I thought was the stone wall, and only one grave was visible.  There are a few indentations where the homes where, and we could see the hollow where the meeting hall was.  On the other hand, Southern Illinois really is prettiest in the Fall.  Still, I suggest planning on coming to this particular site in Spring or Summer.

Millstone Bluff is the site of an unplowed prehistoric Mississippian village, stonebox cemetery, and rock art site, as well as a Late Woodland stone fort.  It was so named because the early settlers in the area carved milling stones along the base of the northwestern edge of the bluff. These hand carved millstones were used to mill local farmers' grains into flour.  This is actually at the parking lot and the first thing you see.

The inhabitants of Millstone Bluff lived in semi-subterranean houses. They excavated rectangular holes in the ground and then excavated deep (approximately two feet deep) trenches along the exterior of the pit. Upright posts were placed in trenches and smaller branches were woven in and out of the upright posts similar to a basket. The walls were then packed with clay to make it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.   You can still see where some of these houses used to be, only they aren't rectangular anymore, where the walls cave in after the home is abandoned, the dirt that fills in the space makes it an oval shape instead.  There is also a large packed down area which was used as a 'public square' where still no trees grow, and a much larger home shaped area that they used as a meeting house.

Charcoal was taken from wall logs yielding Carbon 14 dates from 1350-1510, indicating the site was occupied relatively late in prehistory. To put the prehistoric occupation at Millstone Bluff into correct context, the site was being occupied after Columbus's "discovery" of the New World (1492) and before Hernando De Soto's 1540 march through the southeastern United States.  Why did they live up here on this bluff? We still don't know why they were living up on Millstone Bluff. However, given the late date of this site, it may be that there may have been warfare in Southern Illinois during this time period and they were living in this fairly inaccessible location for protection.


Further down the trail is a bluff where they carved a thunderbird and other animals.  As you loop back around there is a cemetery, but all the graves had been looted many many years before, and nothing is left but the empty stone lined graves.

This is a half mile trail, but it is straight uphill on the way up the bluff, so prepare to be winded by the time you get to the top.  It follows the circle of the bluff, then winds back down the original path.  


Directions:

From I-57 South 
Take exit 44 to merge onto I-24 E toward Nashville
Take exit 16 for IL-146 toward Vienna/Golconda
Turn left onto IL-146 E
Turn left onto IL-147 E
Turn left at the Millstone Bluff sign.