A historian, John W. Monette, in 1844 described the complex as occupying close to 400 acres and noted the existence of twelve small mounds and one large one.

Its base covered an acre of ground[5] and had three levels, the bottom two rectangular and the third on the top a truncated conical mound.

[1] During the Civil War, the mound was reduced even further when some of its fill was removed to construct Confederate rifle pits.

[8] In 1931 the mound was drastically reduced in size, the majority of its remaining mass being used as fill for a nearby bridge approach.

The site takes its name from the Troy Plantation, which was part of a Spanish land grant of 1,000 acres made to John Hebrard in 1786.

[7] William Dunbar was the first European to make note of the mound site in his report to Thomas Jefferson for the Red River expedition of 1804.

He found woven cane matting, palmetto fronds, and wooden planks within the mound, materials used by the Native Americans as part of the complex engineering to build the large structure.