I visited Cahokia Mounds last week, and was impressed again at what a stunning site it is. In particular, the pictures of what the site looked like originally caught my eye.

I think a lot of people forget that the largest city in America in Pre-Columbian times was right across the river from St. Louis.

Just like in St. Louis, some of the mounds were hauled away for fill, which was the case with the second largest mound at Cahokia, seen above.

it’s actually very hard to capture Cahokia in photographs, as the site is universally green, except for one house right in the middle of the site.

Monks Mound is truly impressive, and larger at the base than the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt, so they say.

Looking out on a hazy day towards St. Louis, it’s amazing to see the contrast of two cultures, separated by a millennium. St. Louis would be wise to better market Cahokia as one of the premier archeological sites in the world. Other than New York and Philadelphia, which possess one UNESCO World Heritage site each in their city boundaries, no other American city has the distinction of having a UNESCO site so close to it.