Muscoda Area Mounds, local history and author of new book to be featured at Muscoda Morel Mushroom Festival

MUSCODA...The Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board, in partnership with the Three Eagles Foundation and Cultural Landscape Legacies, will host special events at the board’s office in Muscoda on the Saturday morning of Morel Mushroom Festival weekend, followed by a special guided tour of the sacred effigy mounds site known as “Frank’s Hill” at 1:00 in the afternoon. The activities begin on May 17th at 9:00 a.m. with a lecture by Mark Cupp, Riverway Board Executive Director, entitled, “The Mounds of the Muscoda Area”, during which he will describe the types of earthworks found in Wisconsin and then focus on mound sites within a short distance of Muscoda. The Riverway Board office is located at 202 N. Wisconsin Ave., next door to the village office, also known as “Mushroom Headquarters”.      

Cupp has been with the Riverway project since its inception in 1989 and has studied the Effigy Mound Building Culture, known as the Late Woodland Tradition, since that time. He is one of the leading local experts on the location of mound sites in the final 92 miles of the lower Wisconsin River valley and has helped to protect mounds and rock art sites for decades. Maps, diagrams, aerial photographs, and new technology showing mound sites will be utilized during the lecture. An opportunity for questions will follow....

(See the rest of this story in the May 15, 2025 Chronicle issue)