Located on a precontact Native American trail later named by the Spanish as El Camino Real de los Tejas, the settlement developed hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans to the region.

The site began with the founding of a permanent village by the Hasinai,[2] who moved into the region from the Red River area to the northeast, in roughly 850 to 900 CE.

[3] The region had ideal qualities for a village: good soil, abundant food resources, and a permanent water source that flowed into the Neches River.

[5] The settlement was abandoned when the local Caddo ritually capped the mounds around 1250 CE and focused their activities from the east to west, according to their oral history.

The earliest recorded written mention of the mounds was in 1779 by Athanase de Mézières, who traveled from Louisiana to San Antonio in the employ of the Spanish government.

[3] The first scientific excavations were conducted from 1939 to 1941 by H. Perry Newell, a University of Texas archeologist with the federal Work Projects Administration in the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In July 2016, elder Phil Cross was interviewed about construction of a Caddo grass house at the site, with workers using traditional techniques.

The loss of the visitor center's museum-like display space destroyed many replica items, but actual artifacts had been withdrawn from public view long before by agreement between the Historical Commission and persons with standing in representation of the Caddo Confederacy of Native Americans.