Cahokia Mounds

We made a weekend trip to St Louis at the end of last month & did a lot of tromping around outdoors. The activity I was most excited about was our trip to see the Cahokia Mounds, which I'd never visited. 

Here's an areal photo of Monk's Mound, which it the one you're allowed to climb:  

And here's a rendering of how the city looked at its height: 

There's also museum/interpretive center - definitely worth a visit: 

The area was first settled around 800, but the "golden age" of Cahokia was around 1100-1200, when most mounds were constructed. At the time, the population was approximately 20,000 people -- it was a larger metropolis than London. The city was abandoned around 1350, and is named "Cahokia" for the people who inhabited it later on in the 1600's.

We (Sam) only took a very few photos ourselves. The sky was beautiful and clear and the day was sunny but cool. Zoom in on this photo to see the St. Louis skyline. It seemed clear and close in person from the top of Monk's Mound (named for the Trappist monks who lived near the area in the 1800's). 

There had been a torrential downpour the night before and it was quite wet!

Leah climbed all the way to the top by herself - there were two flights of stairs like this with a landing in between. (That's me at the top - I carried her back down very slowly!)

I think Amelie's going to make a scale model of the city for her final independent project at school - it'll combine math and social studies. We bought a guide book for $1 and I checked out another book at the library, but she hasn't yet started.