There are many curious natural formations in Kentucky; yet the many artificial mounds also have added interest to the topography, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish where nature ends and art begins.

The noted scientist, C.S. Rafinesque, claimed to have discovered one hundred and forty-eight ancient sites and over five hundred monuments in this state.

The greater number of the mounds were small cone-like structures from five to ten or sometimes forty feet in height; in several counties those of pyramid shape were found, and other counties contained unusual structures.

In Bourbon were found several sites, forty-six monuments, a circus of fourteen hundred and fifty feet, and a town whose stretch of walls measured four thousand six hundred and seventy-five feet.

Hickman County had a teocalli, or temple, ten feet high, thirty feet wide, and four hundred and fifty feet long.

Livingston with several sites and monuments had also an octagon whose walls measured twenty-eight hundred and fifty-two feet in length.

In McCracken was found a teocalli fourteen feet high and twelve hundred feet long.

Rockcastle had a stone grave three feet high, five feet wide, and two hundred feet long.

Warren claimed a ditched town, octagonal in shape, measuring in perimeter one thousand three hundred and eighty-five feet.

In Trigg was found a walled town with a circumference of seven thousand five hundred feet.

A mound more than twenty feet high with a diameter of over one hundred feet was located in Montgomery.

In Estill was located one fifteen feet high, one hundred and ninety-two feet in diameter, and surrounded by a moat ten feet deep and thirty-five feet wide.

A horseshoe-shaped fort of about ten acres in area was found in Caldwell. Its curve was bordered by a perpendicular bluff of sixty feet, and the two points of the shoe were connected by a stone wall ten feet high and six hundred feet long, with a gateway eight feet wide.

In Hickman, O'Bryan's fort; in Madison, a stone fort containing four or five hundred acres; and in Greenup, an effigy mound representing a bear, "leaning forward, measuring fifty-three feet from the top of the back to the end of the fore leg and one hundred five and one half feet from the tip of the nose to the rear of the hind foot," with those already mentioned, give a faint idea of the variety of mounds in shape, size, and structure. Yet these are only a few of the many ancient remains in Kentucky of the Mound Builders who have left their imprint throughout our great central valley and whose wide range has left in the same mound "the mica of the Alleghenies, the obsidian of Mexico, the copper of the Great Lakes, and shells from the Gulf of the Southland."

Since the location of these remains the plowshare has leveled many mounds, but several can yet be traced.