562 - Pulver Mounds State Historic Site

Driving on North Dakota Highway 83 between Washburn and Underwood, you are almost sure to notice a few things. Wildlife is abundant in this area, as well as farmland. But the most recognizable fixture is probably the 13.5 million pound dragline, mining for coal on the east side of the highway. Have you ever stopped to think about what the land was like before the discovery of coal? What was here before the massive dragline? What stories does the land have to tell from thousands of years ago? Pulver Mounds State Historic Site is one story.

Sitting on a bluff above Coal Lake, Pulver Mounds preserves two low, conical burial mounds that date back to the Woodland period, approximately 100 BC to AD 600. During that time the Woodland people buried their dead in carefully prepared underground graves, called burial chambers. To mark the cemetery, a round pile of earth, called a conical mound, was formed over the grave. In North Dakota, the mounds typically ranged in height from two to twenty-five feet and were between ten and sixty feet wide. The two mounds here are approximately forty-five feet in diameter and are three to five feet high.

While no one knows the exact story of these mounds, it is likely that this site was used for hundreds or even thousands of years. After the Woodland people, the Plains Village groups would, on occasion, use the tops of existing burial mounds as places of interment. Sacred to American Indians and significant to the history of North Dakota, Pulver Mounds and the land immediately surrounding it was donated to the State of North Dakota by the Falkirk Mining Company. Even though access to the site is limited due to mining, the preservation ensures the story will be told of this prehistoric burial site for years to come.