[3] The site was visited by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis in the mid 19th-century.
They wrote about the site in their 1848 book, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.
"[2] The creekside section of the work has a wall four feet in height, which runs alongside the bank.
One area of the main fortification was broken down, creating a gully which flowed with water from a nearby spring.
[2] Based on their excavations, the stated that "nearly all mounds examined were places of sacrifice, containing altars,".
Squier and Davis stated that the amount of labor required to build the works was "immense," and that the embankments total three miles in length with approximately three million cubic feet of soil being used to build it.