Artifacts
Valley View is a broad flat plain that sits at the confluence of the Little Miami and East Fork Rivers. In prehistoric times, that would be the equivalent of sitting at a very busy interstate highway interchange. For thousands of years before early settlers arrived in Milford, Native Americans traveled up and down these rivers along footpaths and by canoe. The flat land of the Valley View site just nine miles upstream of the Ohio River was abundant with game and fish and ideal for growing crops. In 2006, Valley View engaged Frank L. Cowan, PhD, RPA to complete a Cultural Resources Assessment and Management Plan for our property. Dr. Cowan reported that "The confluence of the East Fork and the Little Miami River is an area of extraordinary concentration of prehistoric sites ranging in age from Paleoindian (ca. 10,000 to 8000 B.C.) to the Late Prehistoric (A.D. 1000 to 1650) periods." We asked Dr. Cowan to evaluate artifact collections of three families who farmed our land for the past 200 years. Several of those artifacts are shown on this page and more can be seen by clicking Read More below. Dr. Cowan found these collections to contain a high concentration of artifacts from the Middle and Late Archaic periods (ca. 6000 - 1000 B.C.). We tilled a small section of the property for Dr. Cowan to investigate. In that small area he found artifacts from the Late Archaic period (ca. 2000 B.C.) and from the Middle Woodland (100 B.C. to A.D. 400). By protecting our property in perpetuity, we hope the site can be used for years to come for further study and education about the ancient history of the area.
Additional Information
Cultural Resources Assessment and Management Plan for the CA. 100-Acre Valley View Foundation Property ion Milford, Clermont County, Ohio
Earthworks
While Serpent Mound is one of the most famous earthworks in Ohio and the Nation, few know that there was actually a very large bird shaped earthworks pictured above in Milford. This "Milford Works" sat on land immediately above Valley View's property. The "tail feathers" of the bird were positioned at the top of the bluff along Gatch Street and South Milford Road above Valley View. General Lytle was the first to survey the Milford Works. In 1803, President Jefferson saw General Lytle's maps of the Milford Works, and became fascinated and requested more information about "Those works of Antiquity." This could explain why Major Isaac Roberdeau, head of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came to Milford to personally survey the Milford Works and produced the map above in 1823. Roberdeau assisted in the initial surveying of Washington D.C. in the1790s and surveyed about 900 miles of the U.S.-Canadian border after the war of 1812. Roberdeau's survey which is stored at the National Archives in Alexandria, Virginia, states that "the walls are earth, from 5 to 10 feet high, generally upwards of 30 feet across. No ditches." In 1882, Frederic Ward Putnam, of Harvard's Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, visited the Milford Works. He reported at that time that square and great circle of the earthwork shown above could still be traced but that their embankments had been nearly leveled by cultivation. The "singular diverging walls" that were likely on the bluff above Valley View were completely obliterated. We find this rich history of our land tied to the founders of our Nation to be absolutely fascinating.
Additional Information
Ohio's "Hanukkah Mound" by J. Huston McCulloch PhD
Fossils
Long before Native Americans inhabited Valley View, this property was an ocean floor. The Ordovician Age brachiopod shown above was found in the fields of our property years ago. This brachiopod likely lived 443 to 488 million years ago! Scientists believe that at the time this guy lived in the ocean, our property was located south of the Equator.
These odd shaped "horns" are actually fossils. They are remnants of an extinct class of corals also from the Ordovician Age commonly called "rugose coral." these corals lived on the sea floor or in a reef-framework. These corals likely possessed stinging cells to capture prey. They also likely had tentacles to help them catch prey.
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This unidentified fossilized bone is common in the area.