Travel
Ancient Earthworks In Ohio Designated As 25th World Heritage Site
Monumental earthworks were built 2,000 years ago by Native American communities, and these sacred places now constitute Ohio’s first World Heritage Site.
Twenty-one countries on the UNESCO World Heritage Committee issued their decision to inscribe Ohio’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks as the United States’ 25th addition to the World Heritage List this past September. The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, a series of ancient sites located in southern Ohio, were nominated to the UNESCO World Heritage List in January 2022 by the U.S. Department of the Interior, but the process to get to that point has been over a decade in the making. World Heritage inscription brings recognition to places of exceptional interest and value.
More than 1,000 World Heritage sites exist around the globe. The World Heritage Committee members agreed that the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks deserve to be recognized alongside such places as Stonehenge in England and the Nazca Lines in Peru, as well as other iconic places in the United States, including Independence Hall and the Grand Canyon.
The sites that make up the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks — five locations managed by the National Park Service and three managed by the Ohio History Connection — were built between approximately 1,500 and 2,200 years ago by people now referred to as the Hopewell culture. The earthworks, constructed on an enormous scale and using a standard unit of measure, form precise squares, circles, and octagons as well as a hill-top sculpted to enclose a vast plaza. The geometric forms are consistently deployed across great distances and encode alignments with both the sun’s cycles and the far more complex patterns of the moon.
Artifacts found at the sites rank among the most outstanding art objects produced in pre-Columbian North America and show that those who built the earthworks interacted with people as far away as the Yellowstone basin and Florida. These are among the largest earthworks in the world that were not fortifications or defensive structures.
The eight Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks sites are in Ohio’s Licking, Ross, and Warren counties. The National Park Service’s Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe includes the Mound City Group, Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, High Bank Works, and Hopeton Earthworks. The Ohio History Connection’s Great Circle Earthworks and Octagon Earthworks are in Heath and Newark, respectively, and Fort Ancient Earthworks and Nature Preserve is in the Warren County city of Oregonia.
For more information, visit hopewellearthworks.org.
Patriotic Mission
Wreaths Across America Tour
This 48-foot mobile exhibit has a 24-person screening room that showcases a video about Wreaths Across America’s mission, as well as storyboards and other displays.
Wreaths Across America has announced the 2024 tour schedule for its Mobile Education Exhibit (MEE). This rolling interactive museum shares the organization’s mission to “Remember the fallen, Honor those who serve, and Teach the next generation the value of freedom.”
The 2024 national tour will begin in North Carolina in January and then head to South Carolina in February, followed by stops in Georgia, Kentucky, and Florida in March and April. The MEE will then head to Tennessee and Ohio in May, followed by Arkansas in June, and Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois for the rest of the summer. After that, the exhibit will visit the Delmarva Peninsula on the East Coast in September and October.
From there, it will make its way up through New England for the next month before heading home to Maine to join Wreaths Across America’s “Escort to Arlington” ahead of Wreaths Across America Day 2024.
Wreaths Across America is a nonprofit organization founded to continue and expand the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery started by Maine businessman Morrill Worcester in 1992. Ceremonies take place at Arlington in December. In addition, wreaths are laid at thousands of veterans’ cemeteries and other locations in all 50 states and beyond.
For more information or to sponsor a wreath, visit www.wreathsacrossamerica.org.
Outdoors
Ice Fishing RVs
Ice fish houses make this sport much more comfortable, sheltering anglers from the elements. An ATV can even be stored in the garage area.
Serious anglers don’t let freezing winter weather in the North stop them from pursuing their passion. They head for the ice and drill their way to a catch. And those who want the ultimate comfort do so in an RV made just for this purpose. Ice fish houses on wheels offer the ideal solution.
The lightweight fish houses generally can be towed by a small vehicle or ATV, making it possible to position them in an ideal spot. They come with a pulley system that retracts the wheels upward so that the RV sits flat on the ice, eliminating any air pockets, for warmth and to make the ice more accessible. They are equipped with basic sleeping, cooking, and bathroom facilities and are climate controlled, so occupants are sheltered from the cold. Some even come with a fireplace for heat. Multiple ice holes in the floor make it possible to fish without exposure to the elements. To meet a family who enjoys ice fishing, and for general information, visit www.gorving.com/explore-rvs/ice-fish-houses.
One example of a manufacturer that builds these fish houses on wheels is Ice Castle Fish Houses based in Montevideo, Minnesota. The family-owned company builds a variety of RV models, ranging from 16 to 33 feet in length. Some even incorporate slideouts. For more info, visit icecastlefh.com/castles/.
Forest River offers several ice fish trailers in its Grey Wolf line, ranging in length from 25 feet 6 inches to 32 feet. To explore the options, visit forestriverinc.com/rvs/travel-trailers/grey-wolf.
Of course, when it comes to fishing on ice, safety is paramount. As the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources notes on its website, ice is never 100 percent safe. And there is no sure answer as to when it’s safe. Officials note that you can’t judge the strength of ice just by its appearance, age, thickness, temperature, or whether the ice is covered with snow. Strength is based on all these factors —plus the depth of water under the ice, the size of the water body, the water chemistry and currents, the distribution of the load on the ice, and local climatic conditions. For ice safety tips, visit www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/index.html.