Monks' Mound

I look out from the structure — known as Monks Mound — at the flatlands below, with smaller mounds dotting the distance.

Across the Mississippi from Monks Mound is the city of St. Louis, where one in five people live in poverty.

Across the Mississippi River from Monks Mound, the city skyline of St. Louis is visible.

In the later stages of Cahokia, the ruling class surrounded themselves with fortified wooden stockades, including a two-mile long wall that enclosed Monks Mound.

A half mile from Monks Mound is the seven-foot-high Mound 72, in which archeologists found the remains of a man on a platform covered with 20,000 conch-shell disc beads from the Gulf of Mexico.