08/25/2026
🦬 Chattanooga’s Tale of Two Mounds 🛶
Along Chattanooga’s Amnicola Highway lie the stories of two important Native American mound sites—and two very different outcomes. Roxbury (Chickamauga) Mound, a Woodland Period earthwork dating back roughly 2,000–3,000 years, remarkably survives today beneath its trees and surrounding development. Just down the road, the much larger Citico Mound was once the center of a major Mississippian town dating to the centuries before and around European contact.
More than 100 burials were documented during early excavations, and the mound itself stood through the Civil War before being largely leveled for road construction in 1914. Although much of Citico was destroyed, later archaeological work proved that portions of the ancient settlement still survive beneath the modern landscape. Today, LiDAR allows us to see the surviving Roxbury Mound rising from the landscape, while Citico survives largely through archaeology and historical records—a powerful reminder of how much of Chattanooga’s Native American past remains hidden beneath the city we see today.
𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗮'𝘀 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀
📌 Roxbury (Chickamauga) Mound — Chattanooga, Tennessee
📍 35°05'26.12"N, 85°15'37.62"W
📌 Citico Town & Mound — Chattanooga, Tennessee
📍 35°03'18.05"N, 85°17'02.51"W
Along Amnicola Highway in Chattanooga are two important Native American mound sites with very different stories. One survives. The other was destroyed.
𝗥𝗼𝘅𝗯𝘂𝗿𝘆 / 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗺𝗮𝘂𝗴𝗮 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱
The tree-covered Roxbury Mound dates to the Woodland Period (roughly 900 BC–900 AD) and was once surrounded by an extensive village. It was probably used, at least in part, as a burial mound. When archaeologist Clarence B. Moore described it in 1915, it stood slightly more than 10 feet high and 60 feet across. He also noted several smaller rises nearby that were said to be the remains of other mounds already plowed away.
Over the years it has been known as Bell Mound, Roxbury Mound, NK Mound, Chickamauga Mound, or the mound on Lost Mound Drive. Despite everything built around it, the mound itself survives and is considered the best-preserved prehistoric earthwork remaining in Chattanooga. This is where LiDAR really tells the story. Strip away the trees and modern imagery and the ancient mound still rises unmistakably from the landscape.
𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗼 𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗻 & 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱
Only a short distance down Amnicola Highway was something much larger. Citico was a major Mississippian town and mound complex near the mouth of Citico Creek. Archaeologically designated 40HA65, the site is primarily associated with the Dallas phase of Mississippian culture and was part of the Native American world of this region during the era of Hernando de Soto's expedition in 1540.
The principal mound was approximately 110 by 145 feet and more than 15 feet high, but Citico was much more than a mound. It was built over the remains of an earlier settlement. Historical descriptions record a thick layer of ashes and occupation debris beneath it, as well as postholes from a structure that had stood there before the mound was constructed.
Clarence B. Moore excavated portions of Citico in 1914. More than 100 burials were reportedly encountered, along with shell gorgets, earrings, bone implements, stone celts, projectile points, pipes and other artifacts. One historical account also describes an iron celt believed at the time to be Spanish, possibly reflecting early European contact, although that interpretation is not certain.
The mound was still standing during the Civil War and was photographed around 1864–65, when Union forces occupied the area. According to historical accounts, when heavy guns were fired to celebrate the end of the war, the concussion collapsed a tunnel in the side of the mound, revealing the remains of a structure and six human skeletons.
The mound survived the Civil War, but it didn't survive Chattanooga's development.
In 1914, much of Citico Mound was leveled for road construction along the river. Historical accounts describe artifacts being recovered while steam shovels tore through it. One later estimate claims remains from as many as 10,000 Native American burials may have been pushed into the Tennessee River with material from the mound. That number is an estimate rather than a confirmed archaeological count, but the scale of what was destroyed was enormous.
Even then, Citico wasn't completely gone. Archaeological investigations decades later demonstrated that parts of the larger town remained beneath the modern landscape. Excavations uncovered Mississippian pottery, stone tools, midden deposits, structural evidence and animal remains including deer, turkey, bear, turtle and fish.
In the late 1980s, trenching in the Amnicola Highway right-of-way disturbed another Native American burial near a newly constructed building adjacent to what is now the Tennessee-American Water Company property. Archaeological testing showed that intact deposits still survived beneath an area that appeared on the surface to have been completely transformed.
Today these two sites sit along the same heavily developed corridor. I've lived in Chattanooga and used this area for more than ten years, and that makes Citico particularly frustrating for me. Part of this landscape became highway, while other portions were flattened for development that today includes parking, greenspace and a restaurant. Knowing the area, it's difficult for me to look at what replaced it and not question how necessary the destruction really was.
Roxbury somehow survived as a small piece of Chattanooga's ancient landscape. Citico, one of the city's most significant Native American sites, was progressively erased from the surface.
Today, LiDAR still lets us at least view one ancient mound still rising from the earth, while the other is only preserved largely in the archaeological record. Two mounds. Two very different outcomes.
