Emerald Mound is a platform built for ceremony on a monumental scale: eight acres at its base, 35 feet high, with two secondary mounds on its summit bringing the total to about 60 feet, built and used by Mississippian peoples between about 1200 and 1730 CE. The National Park Service calls it the second-largest Mississippian ceremonial mound in the United States, surpassed only by Monks Mound at Cahokia, and notes its unusual plan: the ceremonial center sat on top of the mound itself rather than around a plaza.

The Natchez people and their neighbors were still living the Mississippian way of life when the French arrived around 1700, and when De Soto's horsemen passed in the 1540s they documented riding up to temple mounds still in use. The NPS names the Chickasaw Nation, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians as descendant peoples, and asks visitors to respect the site's ceremonial origin.

Visiting

Emerald Mound sits at milepost 10.3 on the Natchez Trace Parkway (Emerald Mound Road, Adams County MS), open sunrise to sunset daily, free, with a trail to the top.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emerald_Mound_-_Natchez_Trace_Parkway_%2827507065320%29.jpg), CC BY-SA 2.0, Tony Webster.

Associated traditions & practices

Native American Traditions Ancestor Work Sacred Site Pilgrimage