The mounds are a product of the Hopewell tradition which flourished in the Sterling area around 2,000 years ago.

Among some of the other early European settlers was a group of men who were interested in starting a Science Club.

The Sterling Scientific Club, in existence as early as the 1870s, made one of their goals the investigation of the burial mounds near the Rock River.

[3] One year later, another written account of a mound investigation appeared in The Sterling Daily Gazette.

[4] The area of the park where the mounds are found, located on a bluff overlooking the Rock River, was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on May 14, 1979, as the Sinnissippi Site.